The theme of the Milan World's Fair, running through October 31, is food. But the real action is in the temporary buildings. While each nation's pavilion pays varying degrees of lip service to the local agricultural and culinary traditions, for most, the effort clearly went into creating photo-ready architectural ambassadors, to infiltrate a little soft-power propaganda into the Facebook pages and Instagram feeds of tourists around the world.

A walk down the Expo 2015 midway is a parade of the striking, the surreal, and the downright tacky, each pavilion twisting and vaulting in an effort to out-impress the others. As the world's temporary Main Street, the Expo midway vividly illustrates that the world is a weird town. Here are just a few examples that caught my eye:

 by Jason Toon

Fondazione Prada had to know what they were getting when they asked Wes Anderson to design the cafe at their new museum and exhibition space in southeastern Milan. Every detail of Bar Luce is planned to evoke the midcentury mood and aesthetic of Italian Neorealist cinema. Anderson specifically cites Vittorio De Sica's Miracolo a Milano (1951) and Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960) as inspirations for a bar that "would make a pretty good movie set, [but] an even better place to write a movie." I was eager to see how well he succeeded...

by Jason Toon

San Siro cuts a suitably distinctive figure for this most style-conscious of cities, Milan. The original 1920s stadium (officially named Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, which nobody calls it in practice) sits inside a shell built around it, to add a third tier of seats and a partial roof for the World Cup in 1990. The visual drama comes from this addition, with the massive red girders jutting out at each corner and the towering spiral walkways. It glows in the murk of a cloudy September evening like a monument built by a dead alien civilization.

I'm in the crowd of pilgrims for tonight's episode of the twice-yearly Derby della Madonnina, the clash between the two teams that share San Siro: Internazionale Milan, who wear black and blue, and who everyone calls Inter; and AC Milan, who wear black and red, and who are confusingly called simply Milan except by Inter fans, who opt for the equally simple "merda" (shit).

If you listen to the pessimists, that dead civilization might be Milanese soccer itself. It's true that Inter and AC Milan are both going through rebuilding periods. After dominating the Serie A league for decades, they spent last season mired in the middle of the pack. For the second straight season, the Champions League of the top European clubs has no Milanese entry, a streak that had gone back to 2001.