Rick Steves' Milan

Milan, lakes, or mountains part 1: Urban Milan

By Rick Steves

Italy intensifies as you plunge deeper. If you like it as far south as Rome, go farther — it gets better. But, if Italy's wearing you down, you'll enjoy a milder Italy in the North, complete with the same great cappuccino, gelato, and people-watching you need.
North Italy's charms come in three packages: urban Milan, romantic lakes, and alpine Dolomites. All are within three hours of Venice, Florence, and each other.

Milan

For every church in Rome, there's a bank in Milan. Italy's second city and the capital of Lombardy, Milan is a hardworking, fashion-conscious, time-is-money city of 1.3 million. Milan is Italy's fashion, industrial, banking, TV, publishing, and convention capital. The economic success of modern Italy can be blamed on this city of publicists and pasta power lunches.
As if to make up for its shaggy parks, blocky fascist architecture, and bombed-out post-WWII feeling, its people are works of art. Milan is an international fashion capital with a refined taste. Window displays are gorgeous, cigarettes are chic, and even the cheese comes gift-wrapped. Yet, thankfully, Milan is no more expensive for tourists than other Italian cities.
Milan's cathedral, the city's centerpiece, is the third-largest church in Europe. At 480 feet long and 280 feet wide, forested with 52 sequoia-sized pillars and more than 2,000 statues, the place can seat 10,000 worshipers. Hike up to the rooftop — a fancy crown of spires — for great views of the city, the square, and, on clear days, the Italian Alps.
The cathedral square, Piazza Duomo, is a classic European scene. Professionals scurry, label-conscious kids loiter, and young thieves peruse. Facing the square, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, Milan's great four-story-high, glass-domed arcade, invites you in to shop or just sip a slow latte. Some of Europe's hottest people-watching turns that pricey cup into a good value (or get the same view for peanuts from McDonald's). Enjoy the parade. For good luck, locals step on the testicles of the little mosaic bull (torino, symbol of the city of Turin) in the floor. Two local girls explained that it's even better luck if you spin.
The immense Sforza Castle, Milan's much-bombed and rebuilt brick fortress, is overwhelming at first sight. But its courtyard has a great lawn for picnics and siestas. Its free museum features interesting medieval armor, furniture, Lombard art, and a Michelangelo statue with no crowds: his unfinished Rondanini Pietà. The Brera Art Gallery, Milan's top collection of paintings, is world-class (although you'll see better in Rome and Florence).
La Scala is possibly the world's most prestigious opera house. Opera buffs will love the museum's extensive collection of things that would mean absolutely nothing to the MTV crowd: Verdi's top hat, Rossini's eyeglasses, Toscanini's baton, Fettucini's pesto, and the original scores, busts, portraits, and death masks of great composers and musicians.
Leonardo's ill-fated The Last Supper (known by its location as Cenacolo to the Italians, say "cheh-NAH-koh-lo") is flecking off the refectory wall of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The fresco suffers from Leonardo's experimental use of oil and deterioration began within six years of its completion. The church was bombed in World War II, but — miraculously, it seems — the wall holding The Last Supper remained standing. It's undergone more restoration work than Cher and is now viewable only with a reservation. Most of the original paint is gone, but tourists still enjoy paying to see what's left.
More of Leonardo's spirit survives in Italy's answer to the Smithsonian, the Leonardo da Vinci National Science and Technology Museum. While most tourists visit for the hall of Leonardo's designs illustrated in wooden models, the rest of this vast collection of industrial cleverness is just as fascinating. Plenty of push-button action displays the development of planes, trains, and automobiles, ships, radios, old musical instruments, computers, batteries, telephones, chunks of the first transatlantic cable, interactive science workshops, and on and on. Some of the best exhibits (such as the Marconi radios) branch off the Leonardo hall.