Milan: Where Fashion, Art and Design Meet
Milan is the capital of Lombardy in northern Italy, a city of around 1.4 million people known worldwide for fashion, design, finance and one of the great Gothic cathedrals. The Duomo, begun in 1386, rises in white marble spires above the central square, and visitors can walk its rooftop terraces among the pinnacles. Next door, the glass-roofed Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the world's most elegant shopping arcade by reputation, leads to Teatro alla Scala, the opera house that opened in 1778 and remains a global stage for opera and ballet.
Art runs deep. Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, painted on the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie, was inscribed by UNESCO in 1980 together with the church. The Pinacoteca di Brera holds masterpieces of Italian painting in the bohemian Brera district, and the Castello Sforzesco, a fifteenth-century fortress, houses museums and opens onto the green expanse of Parco Sempione. Newer landmarks, such as the Bosco Verticale towers in the Porta Nuova quarter, show how the city continues to reinvent its skyline.
Aperitivo, Navigli Canals and Milanese Flavours
Milan's style is as much a way of living as a set of monuments. The Quadrilatero della Moda, around Via Montenapoleone, gathers the city's best-known fashion houses, and twice a year Fashion Week brings the world's press. In April, the Salone del Mobile and the citywide Design Week turn courtyards, showrooms and galleries into an open-air exhibition. Even outside those moments, the city's design shops, bookshops and concept stores reward unhurried browsing, with Brera and the Tortona district among the best streets for it.
Evenings gravitate to the Navigli, the old canal district, where bars and restaurants line the water and the Italian tradition of aperitivo is at its liveliest. The cuisine is distinctive: risotto alla milanese, golden with saffron, cotoletta alla milanese, a veal cutlet fried in butter, and ossobuco, braised veal shank. At Christmas, panettone is the city's signature sweet. A hotel group could use VisitMilan.co.uk to place a Milan stay at the heart of any northern Italian itinerary.
Read the full Milan guide on Visit Travel Group, or see VisitMilan.co.uk on Visit Travel Group.