A guide to Milan and what's new in Italy's most fashionable northern city

16.10.2023 - 16:01 / nationalgeographic.com / Leonardo Da-Vinci / Art

It’s too modern. It’s too fashion-focused. It’s fast-paced, devoid of la dolce vita, it doesn’t feel Italian. Milan has had the same old criticisms levelled at it for decades, and for decades Italy’s business capital has shrugged them off. Because anyone who really knows the city knows it’s not like that at all. The difference between Milan and the rest of the country is that where most Italian cities put their heritage on blousy display, Milan stands back, willing you to discover hers gradually. 

Heading out from the Piazza del Duomo, home to the marble-drenched cathedral, you can rattle around on the city’s vintage trams and wander through the village-like districts spiralling out from the centre; each has its own identity, from artistic Brera to cool Ticinese. Peer through every open gateway and you might see a palazzo, a hidden garden, a 1930s villa — or a piazza-sized Renaissance cloister that just opened to the public after centuries of silence (the Portrait Milano). 

That’s the other thing about Milan: it’s ever changing. This mercurial city has seen many lives — from Roman Mediolanum (traces of whose walls sit in the archaeological museum) to a city state so powerful that ruler Ludovico Sforza cajoled Leonardo da Vinci to migrate here as his engineer, leaving the world’s most famous mural, The Last Supper, in his wake. Milan also played a pivotal role in the unification of Italy, created unimaginable wealth during the Industrial Revolution, and was subjected to heavy bombing during the Second World War. The latter left blank page after blank page for the designers of the 1950s to hone their creativity, streamlining a ‘Made in Italy’ style that entranced the world. 

And it keeps reinventing itself. Global powerhouses from Pirelli to Prada have donated world-class galleries, arranging them around the bones of Milan’s industrial past — a converted gin distillery here, a train factory there. Well-to-do locals honour their dead by donating to galleries or opening their own — the Fondazione Luigi Rovati, opened in 2022, is arguably Italy’s finest Etruscan museum. This is a place of constant refinement, and not just in the ever-changing fashion collections — work on the Duomo, Italy’s largest church, began in 1386 and ended only in 1965.

To be in Milan is to join this eternal quest for perfection, to never rest on your laurels, as many other Italian cities do, but to stretch out a hand to the future. Leonardo wanted to be part of that. You will, too.  

Duomo
The grand, gothic Duomo is best seen from on high. Take the lift or climb 256 steps to the terrazze — meandering rooftop terraces where you can see the intricately carved flying buttresses, pinnacles and statues up close, as well as clocking