Brera
The old artists' quarter behind La Scala, cobbled lanes of galleries, antique shops and the Pinacoteca in its academy palace. It is the prettiest part of the centre to stay in and the one that feels least like a business city.
Things to do
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Arco della Pace
The neoclassical arch of 1838 at the end of Parco Sempione, begun for Napoleon and finished for the Austrians, with the bars of Corso Sempione behind it.
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Bosco Verticale
Stefano Boeri's two residential towers of 2014 planted with some 900 trees, the image of the new Milan. Seen from the Biblioteca degli Alberi park at their feet.
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Colonne di San Lorenzo
Sixteen Roman columns of the second or third century, moved here in the fourth to front the basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiore. The square they enclose is where Milan gathers on summer evenings, and it sits between the centre and the Navigli canals.
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Fondazione Prada
A former gin distillery reworked by Rem Koolhaas into a contemporary art complex, with one building finished in gold leaf. It sits south of the centre and takes a tram to reach. A second site in the centre holds the cinema and a smaller gallery.
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Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
An 1877 shopping arcade under an iron and glass vault, linking the cathedral square to La Scala. It is the ancestor of every covered shopping street built since. It is open at all hours and is the shortest way between the two squares when it rains.
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Milan Cathedral
Six centuries in the building and carrying more statues than any other building on earth. The roof terraces are the reason to come: a walk among the spires and flying buttresses with the Alps visible on a clear day. A lift serves the roof and the stairs are the cheaper way up.
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Milano Centrale
The 1931 railway station, a monument of marble, eagles and iron vaults; the high-speed trains to Rome, Venice and Florence leave from under it.
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Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci
The largest science and technology museum in Italy, in a sixteenth-century monastery, holding a hall of models built from Leonardo's drawings. A submarine and a full transatlantic bridge are parked in the outer galleries. It is large enough to need a plan and half a day.
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Piazza Gae Aulenti
The raised circular piazza at the centre of Porta Nuova, with the Unicredit tower's spire above it and fountains in the floor. The skyline's meeting point.
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Pinacoteca Ambrosiana
An early seventeenth-century library and gallery holding Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit, Raphael's full-size cartoon for the School of Athens, and pages from Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus. The Codex pages are shown in rotation, so what is on view changes from one visit to the next.
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Pinacoteca di Brera
Northern Italian painting at its strongest: Mantegna's foreshortened Dead Christ, Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Caravaggio. It sits in an eighteenth-century palace with an art school still working around it. It sits above the botanical garden and the collection takes about two hours to work through.
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Teatro alla Scala
Opened in 1778 and still the reference opera house in Italy. The museum gives access to a box overlooking the auditorium when nothing is being rehearsed. Tickets for the upper gallery go on sale on the day of the performance and the queue for them forms early in the morning.
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The Last Supper
Leonardo painted his mural on the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in an experimental technique that began flaking within decades and has been stabilised by long restoration. Entry runs in small timed groups for a quarter of an hour, and slots are taken weeks ahead. Booking is the whole battle, since walk-ups are turned away at the door.
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Triennale Milano
The design and architecture museum in the Palazzo dell'Arte on the edge of Parco Sempione, with the Italian design collection and a rooftop terrace.
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Villa Necchi Campiglio
A 1930s villa by Portaluppi in a garden off Corso Venezia, with its pool, its Deco interiors and its art kept as the family left them. Guided visits, and the cafe in the garden.
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ADI Design Museum
Every object awarded the Compasso d'Oro since 1954 sits in one hall here, a run of Italian design that takes in typewriters, espresso makers, lamps, scooters and packaging. The building is a converted industrial shed near Porta Volta, opened as a museum in 2021 and roomy enough to show the collection in order. Design Week in April fills it and queues form early.
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Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio
Founded by Milan's patron saint in 379 and rebuilt in the eleventh century as the model for Lombard Romanesque. The gold altar of Volvinius sits over the crypt. The atrium in front of it is the part most visitors remember, and the university surrounds the site.
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Castello Sforzesco
The Sforza fortress, now a set of civic museums, holding Michelangelo's unfinished Rondanini Pieta, worked on in his last days. The park behind it runs to the Arch of Peace. One combined ticket covers the museums and the courtyards are free to walk through at any hour.
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Cimitero Monumentale
A nineteenth-century cemetery built as an open-air sculpture gallery, where the industrial families competed through their tombs. It is free and almost always quiet. It is a tram ride north of the centre, and the plan handed out at the gate is worth taking.
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Corso Como
The pedestrian street between Porta Garibaldi and Porta Nuova, with 10 Corso Como's courtyard and the nightlife around it.
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Darsena
The old port basin where the two canals meet at Porta Ticinese, rebuilt in 2015 as a promenade with a market on its quay. The Navigli bars start here.
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Mercato Centrale Milano
The food hall inside Central Station, opened in 2021, with counters from the city's best bakers, butchers and pasta makers. The place to eat before a train.
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Museo del Novecento
Twentieth-century Italian art in the Arengario on Piazza del Duomo, Boccioni and the Futurists up a spiral ramp, and a window onto the cathedral at the top.
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Museo Poldi Pezzoli
A collector's house museum on Via Manzoni, with Pollaiolo's profile of a young woman, Botticelli and Mantegna in rooms furnished as he lived in them.
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San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore
The sixteenth-century convent church on Corso Magenta frescoed wall to wall by Bernardino Luini, called Milan's Sistine Chapel and usually empty.
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Santa Maria delle Grazie
A Dominican church whose refectory holds Leonardo's Last Supper. Entry is fifteen minutes for a controlled group and tickets are released in blocks months ahead, so the booking is made long before the trip itself. The church beside the refectory is free and open on ordinary hours.
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Vicolo dei Lavandai
The washhouse lane off the Naviglio Grande, a wooden roof over the stone basins where the city's laundry was done into the 1950s, now the most photographed corner of the canals.
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