Milan, district by district

Milan does not announce itself the way Rome or Florence do. It keeps its best rooms behind heavy doors, and it hands them over slowly, district by district. The canals that once floated marble to the cathedral, the streets the fashion houses quietly colonised, the university quarter, the towers that went up on the old fairground: they are all within a few kilometres of each other, and each one reads completely differently on foot.

This guide goes through the central districts one at a time. For each one you get the feel of the place, what is genuinely worth stopping for, and the hour of the day when it is at its best. At the end there are half a dozen walking routes that string neighbouring districts together, because the most enjoyable way to see Milan is to let one quarter run into the next rather than ticking off pins on a map.

How Milan fits together

Picture the city as a set of rings. The Duomo sits dead centre. Around it is the tight historic core: Brera, the fashion quadrilateral, the old streets that end at the line of the vanished city walls, the bastioni. Outside that line sits a second ring of residential districts, most of them still fifteen or twenty minutes from the cathedral on foot, and beyond those the newer quarters that Milan built on its old railway yards and fairgrounds.

Five metro lines cross underneath: M1 (red), M2 (green), M3 (yellow), M4 (blue) and M5 (lilac). They meet in the middle and fan outwards, which is why districts that look far apart on a map turn out to be four minutes apart underground. Tickets are cheap, trains are frequent, and you can tap in with a contactless card at the gates.

The practical consequence for a visitor is a happy one. You do not need to plan expeditions. Neighbourhoods here are chapters you can read in sequence in a single afternoon, and the walk between two of them is usually as interesting as either one on its own.

The centre and the Duomo

Everything starts in the square. The cathedral took roughly six centuries to finish and looks it, in the best sense: a forest of marble spires and 3,400 statues that changes colour with the weather. Buy the rooftop ticket and go up. Walking among the flying buttresses with the city spread out below is the single best half hour in Milan, and on a clear winter day you can see the Alps from it.

Next door, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a glass-roofed arcade from the 1870s that Milan uses as a living room, and behind it sits La Scala, smaller and plainer from the outside than most people expect. On the south side of the square, the Museo del Novecento holds Italian twentieth century art with a window that frames the cathedral perfectly, and Palazzo Reale next door runs the city's biggest temporary exhibitions. North east of the square, the Quadrilatero della Moda around Via Montenapoleone is where the fashion houses keep their flagship stores, worth walking even if you buy nothing at all.

• Go for: the cathedral and its roof, the Galleria, the Novecento, the flagship stores.
• Best hour: early morning, before the tour groups, or after dark when the facade is lit.
• Metro: M1 and M3 at Duomo, M4 one stop away at San Babila.

Brera

Walk ten minutes north of the cathedral and the streets narrow, the cobbles start and the noise drops. Brera is the closest Milan gets to a postcard: art galleries, antique dealers, ivy, and restaurant tables set out under lanterns. It has been the artists' quarter since the Accademia opened here in the eighteenth century, and the students still spill out of it.

The Pinacoteca di Brera is the reason to come. It is one of Italy's great collections, with Mantegna's foreshortened Dead Christ, Piero della Francesca, Raphael and Caravaggio, and it is rarely as crowded as its quality deserves. Tucked behind the palace is the Orto Botanico, a small eighteenth century botanical garden that almost nobody finds, with two enormous ginkgo trees and a handful of benches. In April the whole quarter becomes the Brera Design District, the most walkable part of Design Week.

• Go for: the Pinacoteca, the hidden botanical garden, aimless wandering, dinner.
• Best hour: early morning for empty lanes, or the evening passeggiata.
• Metro: M2 Lanza, M3 Montenapoleone.

The Navigli and Porta Genova

Milan had a working canal network for eight centuries, built to move stone, grain and people, and Leonardo worked on its locks. Most of it was paved over in the 1930s. What survives is the Naviglio Grande and the Naviglio Pavese, meeting at the Darsena, the old dock basin, and this is where the city goes out.

By day the towpaths are gentle and photogenic: vintage shops, bookstalls, courtyards, and the Vicolo dei Lavandai, a preserved washhouse where laundresses worked into the twentieth century. From the late afternoon the tables come out and the whole strip becomes one long aperitivo, loud and cheerful, busiest from Thursday to Saturday. On the last Sunday of most months, several hundred antique stalls line the Naviglio Grande for the Mercatone dell'Antiquariato, one of the biggest markets of its kind in Italy.

Just north: Porta Ticinese

Between the centre and the canals, Corso di Porta Ticinese is a street of independent shops that passes two remarkable churches. The Basilica di San Lorenzo Maggiore stands behind a row of sixteen Roman columns, the finest classical remains in the city, and the lawn in front of them is where Milan sits out on summer evenings. A few minutes further on, Sant'Eustorgio holds the Portinari Chapel, an early Renaissance jewel that most visitors walk straight past.

Just west: Tortona

Across the tracks from Porta Genova station, the old factory district of Tortona has become Milan's creative quarter. The Mudec museum of cultures, Armani/Silos and the exhibition spaces of Base Milano all sit within a few streets, and during Design Week this is one of the busiest corners of the city.

• Go for: the canals at golden hour, the antiques market, San Lorenzo's columns, the Tortona galleries.
• Best hour: six in the evening onwards, or a quiet Sunday morning.
• Metro: M2 Porta Genova, tram 2, 3, 9 and 14 nearby.

Porta Romana and Crocetta

South east of the cathedral, the streets straighten out and the crowds thin. This is unhurried, well dressed, residential Milan: grand doorways, plane trees, bakeries with a queue at eight in the morning, and courtyards you catch glimpses of when a gate swings open. Very few tourists walk here, which is exactly the appeal.

There is more to see than the quiet suggests. Fondazione Prada, at the southern end of the district, is a former gin distillery turned contemporary art complex by Rem Koolhaas, complete with a gold leaf tower and a bar designed by Wes Anderson. The Rotonda della Besana is an eighteenth century circular cemetery turned garden and exhibition space, with lawns that fill with families on Sunday. Nearer the centre, the Ca' Granda, once the city's hospital and now the Statale university, hides two enormous porticoed courtyards that you can simply walk into, and the Giardino della Guastalla behind it is the oldest garden in Milan, with a sunken fishpond from 1555.

• Go for: Fondazione Prada, the Besana rotunda, university courtyards, everyday Milan.
• Best hour: a weekday morning, or Sunday when the lawns fill up.
• Metro: M3 Crocetta and Porta Romana, M3 Lodi TIBB for Fondazione Prada.

Porta Venezia and the gardens

North east of the centre, wrapped around the city's oldest public park, Porta Venezia is the most mixed and most sociable quarter in Milan. The Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli were laid out in the eighteenth century and still hold the Natural History Museum and the planetarium under their trees. The surrounding streets carry some of Italy's best Liberty architecture, the local answer to art nouveau: Casa Galimberti on Via Malpighi is covered in painted ceramic tiles and is worth a detour on its own.

This is also where Milan eats most interestingly. The area has been home to the city's Eritrean and Ethiopian community for decades, and the side streets hold excellent Habesha kitchens alongside natural wine bars and cocktail rooms. Corso Buenos Aires, running north, is one of the longest shopping streets in Europe and a useful antidote to the prices of the Quadrilatero. A short walk west, Villa Necchi Campiglio is a 1930s rationalist villa with a swimming pool and a garden, preserved exactly as its industrialist owners left it, and one of the loveliest interiors in the city.

• Go for: the gardens, Liberty facades, Villa Necchi, Eritrean food, an unpretentious evening.
• Best hour: late afternoon in the park, then dinner in the side streets.
• Metro: M1 Porta Venezia and Palestro, M1 Lima to the north.

Sant'Ambrogio, Cadorna and the Castello

The west side of the centre is the quietest and, if you care about art and history, the densest. Leonardo's Last Supper covers the end wall of the refectory beside Santa Maria delle Grazie, in fifteen minute timed slots that sell out weeks in advance. Book before you do anything else about your trip. Even without a ticket the church itself, with Bramante's apse, is worth the visit.

Five minutes away, the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio has stood in some form since the fourth century, when the bishop who gave Milan its patron saint founded it, and its brick atrium is one of the great quiet spaces in the city. Opposite sits the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, built around Leonardo's machines and holding a full submarine, which is the best museum in Milan for anyone travelling with children. North from there, Corso Magenta leads back towards the Castello Sforzesco, the Sforza family fortress that now holds a cluster of civic museums including Michelangelo's unfinished final sculpture, the Pietà Rondanini. Behind the castle, Parco Sempione runs up to the Arco della Pace, with the Triennale design museum on one side and a viewing tower on the other.

• Go for: the Last Supper, Sant'Ambrogio, the science museum, the Castello and its park.
• Best hour: the morning for museums, sunset in Parco Sempione.
• Metro: M1 and M2 at Cadorna, M2 Sant'Ambrogio, M1 Cairoli for the Castello.

Isola and Porta Nuova

Twenty years ago this was railway land. Now it is the sharpest skyline in Italy. The Bosco Verticale, two residential towers carrying roughly 800 trees on their balconies, is the building everyone photographs, and it genuinely changes through the year as the planting turns. Piazza Gae Aulenti is a raised circular plaza with fountains and the curved Unicredit tower above it, and the Biblioteca degli Alberi beneath is a modern botanical park with winding paths and open lawns.

Cross the footbridge into Isola and the mood changes completely. The name means island, because the railway cut it off from the rest of the city, and it kept the low buildings, workshops and neighbourhood bars of the Milan that existed before the towers. It is one of the best areas in the city for an unhurried dinner. A little further west, the Cimitero Monumentale is an open air museum of funerary sculpture, extraordinary and free to enter, and far more moving than that description makes it sound.

• Go for: the towers, the modern park, Isola's bars and trattorie, the Monumentale.
• Best hour: late afternoon for the towers, evening in Isola.
• Metro: M2 and M5 at Garibaldi, M5 Isola and Monumentale.

Paolo Sarpi and Chinatown

Milan has the oldest Chinese community in Italy, established here in the 1920s, and its centre is Via Paolo Sarpi, now pedestrianised and lined with bakeries, bubble tea counters, dumpling houses and hardware shops. It is a genuinely local street rather than a tourist attraction, busiest in the early evening, and one of the cheapest places in the city to eat extremely well. Combine it with the Cimitero Monumentale at one end or the Arco della Pace and Parco Sempione at the other.

• Go for: street food, dumplings, a completely different side of the city.
• Best hour: early evening, when the street fills up.
• Metro: M5 Monumentale, M2 Moscova.

Città Studi and Lambrate

East of the centre, named for the universities that fill it, Città Studi is where Milan goes about its ordinary business. The Politecnico anchors it, so the bars are cheap and full of students, the markets run on weekday mornings and the trattorie charge what locals will actually pay. There are no famous sights here, and that is the point: it is the easiest district in which to feel like a temporary resident rather than a visitor.

Next door, Lambrate is a post-industrial pocket of design studios, breweries and galleries in old workshop buildings. During Design Week in April it becomes one of the main Fuorisalone districts and fills with installations, and for the rest of the year it is quietly one of the more interesting corners of the city.

• Go for: everyday markets, honest food, Design Week, a city without a queue in it.
• Best hour: weekday mid morning for the markets, evening for the student bars.
• Metro: M1 Piola and Lambrate, M2 Lambrate FS, M1 and M2 at Loreto.

CityLife

On the site of the old trade fairgrounds to the north west, CityLife is the other new Milan: three landmark towers by Arata Isozaki, Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind, nicknamed by Milanese with characteristic bluntness the Straight One, the Twisted One and the Curved One. Around them is a large landscaped park with contemporary sculpture, wide car free walkways and a covered shopping district built under the towers.

It is spotless, modern and completely unlike the historic city, which makes it a good change of pace on a second or third day. Two survivors of the old fairground remain: the Padiglione 3 and the Palazzo delle Scintille, now used for exhibitions. On Sundays the park fills with families and joggers and the place feels less like a business district and more like a neighbourhood.

• Go for: contemporary architecture, the sculpture park, an easy hour with children.
• Best hour: Sunday morning, or late afternoon when the towers catch the light.
• Metro: M5 Tre Torri, M1 Lotto nearby.

Six walks that link the districts

The districts are close enough that the best days join two or three together on foot. These routes each take two to four hours at an unhurried pace, with stops.

When each district is at its best

Milan runs on a schedule, and several of these quarters are transformed by the hour you arrive. The centre is a different city at eight in the morning than at two in the afternoon. The canals barely exist before five and then become the loudest place in Lombardy.

Getting between them

Walking times below are from the Duomo, at an unhurried pace, with the fastest metro alternative. Nothing in this guide is more than about twenty minutes from the centre by public transport.

Practical notes for exploring

Book the Last Supper before anything else. Tickets are released in blocks and sell out weeks ahead. Nothing else in Milan needs this much forward planning, and nothing else disappoints people as reliably when they leave it too late.

Check opening days. Several civic museums and house museums close on Mondays, and some close on Tuesdays instead, so a Monday is better spent on markets, parks, churches and walking than on a museum itinerary.

Eat on Milanese hours. Lunch runs from about half past twelve to half past two, aperitivo from six to nine, dinner from eight. Kitchens outside the tourist centre genuinely close between services, so an early dinner usually means an aperitivo instead, which is no hardship.

Sundays and Mondays are quiet. Many independent shops close on Sunday and reopen on Monday afternoon. Museums, parks and churches carry a Sunday perfectly well, and the antiques market fills the last Sunday of most months.

Use the trams. The metro is faster, but the old orange 1920s trams on lines like the 1 and the 19 run through the historic centre and give you a moving view of it for the price of an ordinary ticket.

If you only have limited time

Milan gives up its charm slowly and to people who are paying attention. It has no single view that explains it, no obvious circuit to complete. What it has instead is nine or ten distinct quarters within walking distance of each other, each with its own rhythm, and the pleasure of the city lies in moving between them at your own pace. Take the districts one at a time and Milan turns out to be far richer than its reputation suggests.