Things to do in Lombardy & The Lakes
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Lake Como Day Trip from Milan
9 hours (Departs Milan, Italy)
by Viator
Explore scenic Lake Como in Italy's beautiful Lake District on a day trip from Milan. The fashionable lakeside town of Como is just a short drive from Milan, su…Not LP reviewed
from USD$87.68 - All things to do
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Ex Mauri
Go to this contemporary, stylish Venetian bacaro (bar) on Milan’s urban island when you need a little Lombard-free time. Pull up a school chair at a lovingly scuffed table for imaginative seafood cicheti (Venetian-style tapas) : baccalà fritters, sardines in saôr (sweet-and-sour onion jam) and braised baby octopus. Smart but hearty mains take their cues from both Venice and further afield, while the gelati and cakes are house-made.
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Cimitero Monumentale
Behind striking Renaissance- revival black-and-white walls, Milan’s wealthy have kept their dynastic ambitions alive long after death with grand sculptural gestures since 1866. Nineteenth-century death-the-maiden eroticism gives way to some fabulous abstract forms from midcentury masters. Studio BBPR’s geometric steel-and-marble memorial to Milan’s WWII concentration camp dead is stark and moving. Grab a map inside the forecourt - it’s easy to get lost.
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Parco Sempione
Everything you’d expect from Milan is here: a historic castle (Castello Sforzesco), chic bars, a museum honouring design (Triennale di Milano), lovely Liberty-style buildings (Civico Acquario) and an architectural conversation piece (Torre Branca). Plus there’s grass, winding paths, relaxed people, and peace and quiet, too.
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Festivaletteratura
For five days each September, central Mantua is taken over by the Festivaletteratura, with open-air bookstalls, and readings and author discussions (some in English).
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Giardini Pubblici
A life story unfolds as you follow pebble paths past bumper cars and a carousel, onward past a game of kick to kick, kissing teens, a beer kiosk, baby prams, jogging paths and shady benches. Jump in, or just stop and smell the roses. For grey days the charming Museo Civico di Storia Naturale beckons, the grand neo-Romanesque building houses dinosaurs, fossils and the largest geology collection in Europe.
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Palazzo Te
The main reason to visit Mantua’s other Gonzaga palace, Palazzo Te isn’t its modern art and Egyptian displays, but the fanciful 16th-century palace itself. Built by Giulio Romano, over-the-top rooms include the Camera dei Giganti, one of the most fantastic and frightening creations of the Renaissance, adorned with dramatic frescoes depicting Jupiter’s destruction of the Titans.
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Antica Trattoria della Pesa
A recipe for instant nostalgia: take the landmark building where Ho Chi Minh stayed in the ‘30s, add literary types from nearby publishing houses, mix with comfort food - osso bucco on polenta topped with gremolata, bollito misto (boiled meat) and cotoletta (crumbed veal cutlets) - spice it up with some red, and finish with a sigh and smooth, boozy zabaglione.
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Duomo
A frenzy of flying buttresses, 135 spires and a staggering 3200 statues, Milan’s Gothic Duomo is the world’s largest of its kind, and third largest in any style in Europe. This vision of pink-tinged Candoglia marble was commissioned in 1386 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti and has a capacity for a congregation of 40,000 (Milan’s population at the time).
Centuries of construction (from east to west) finally saw it largely completed in 1812 (although various bits and bobs would not be attached until the 1960s). Crowning this Gothic splendour is a gilded copper statue of the Madonnina (Little Madonna), the city’s traditional protector. Curiously, there’s no bell tower.
Th…
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Castello Sforzesco
Originally a Visconti fortress, this immense red-brick castle was later home to the mighty Sforza dynasty that ruled Renaissance Milan. The castle’s defences were designed by Leonardo da Vinci; Napoleon later drained the moat and removed the drawbridges. Today, it shelters a series of specialised museums.
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Luini
Stockbrokers and student radicals, models and their harried hairdressers might get together here and sing Kumbaya, if they didn't all have their mouths full. Panzerotti is Milanese for yummy at this popular purveyor of pizza-dough pastries stuffed with cheeses, spinach, tomato, pesto and prosciutto.
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Princi
Equally delicious for an early-morning cornetto (Italian-type croissant) or stracchino (Lombard cows-milk cheese) -filled focaccia on the way home at midnight, Princi is perfect for a filling bite on the run.
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Pizzeria Spontini
Munch standing up at this busy little joint, which has cooked the best pizza in the Stazione Centrale area since 1953.
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Milan Half-Day Sightseeing Tour with da Vinci's 'The Last Supper'
by Viator
Guarantee your visit to see one of the most famous works of art in the world, Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Last Supper'. Reservations to see this legendary painting…Not LP reviewed
from USD$75.15 -
Museo Inter & Milan
Officially it’s called Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, after a Milanese champion of the 1930s and ‘40s, but to football fans it’s simply San Siro. Milan’s two football teams AC Milan and FC Internazionale (Inter) play here every weekend from October to May. The distinctive red-girdered roof and striped concrete towers were added when the stadium was renovated for the 1990 World Cup, the design also boosting its capacity to 85,700. Serie A fans head for the Museo Inter e Milan, boasting nonstop screenings of matches, memorabilia and trophies galore. Carnival-style papier-mâché dummies of two-dozen football stars (spot your favourite: Gullit, Rijkaard and Matthaus are all t…
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Market stalls
Market stalls selling everything from fruit, flowers, pots, pans and clothes to useless clutter fill Piazzas Sordello, Broletto and delle Erbe and their surrounding streets on Thursday morning. More than a million pigs a year are reared in the province of Mantua. Try salumi (salt pork), pancetta(salt-cured bacon), prosciutto crudo (salt-cured ham) and risotto with the locally grown vialone nano rice.
Tortelli di zucca (sweet pumpkin-stuffed cushions of square pasta) is the city's most venerable dish, while risotto alla pilota (risotto with minced pork) and luccio (pike) also appear on most menus. Mantua is also renowned for its sweet specialities, including torta di tagli…
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Swiss Alps Bernina Express Rail Tour from Milan
12 hours 30 minutes (Departs Milan, Italy)
by Viator
Take a ride on the Bernina Express, Switzerland's newest Alpine delight. This train journey takes you along one of the most beautiful railway routes in the worl…Not LP reviewed
from USD$150.30 -
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Castello di San Giorgio
Palazzo Ducale's centrepiece is Castello di San Giorgio, overflowing with works of art collected by the Gonzaga family, Mantua's long-time rulers. Don't miss Andrea Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi, a wonderful series of frescoes executed by the master between 1465 and 1474 in one of the castle's towers. The trompe l'oeil oculus adds a playful touch to the more formal family scenes.
Other rooms worth pausing over include the Sala del Pisanello, decorated with unfinished 15th-century frescoes of Arthurian legends by Pisanello, the heavily frescoed Sala di Troia and the Camera dello Zodiaco, with its magnificent deep-blue ceiling festooned with figures from the zodiac. Equally…
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Pane e Acqua
Super-stylist Rossana Orlandi has transformed a former corner tabacchi (corner shop) into Milan’s most original and intriguing restaurant. Stark oversized clocks and raw concrete walls are softened by terrazzo floors and an ever-changing explosion of seasonal colour and texture. (For spring, shocking pink blowsy roses decorate the bar, and farmhouse chairs are painted to match.) The food is complex but never modish: a basil-scented cereal and seafood soup is served in steep-sided beaten pewter bowls, hand-cut spaghetti with baccalà (dried cod) and Taggiasche olives is laced with a rich, briny stock. Desserts are equally simple and spot-on: a rich splodge of buffalo ric…
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D’o
When you’ve got a Michelin-starred restaurant and a cool, young Marchesi-trained chef-owner who charges a paltry €11.50 for a 2-course lunch, there has to be a catch, right? Well, there are two: D’o is in a small suburban village around 12km from the centre, and the restaurant has been known to be booked out four months in advance. But it’s worth it. Davide Oldani’s cooking is an ode to ‘poor’ ingredients and simplicity, his aim, to serve ‘humble food made noble by technique’ cheaply. Dishes might include tripe three ways, his signature caramelised onion tart with a parmesan sorbet and a warm parmesan sauce or risotto with Jerusalem artichokes and vanilla. It’s arou…
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Il Vittoriale degli Italiani
Its heyday is recalled at the fabulous estate Il Vittoriale degli Italiani. Italy’s controversial poet and ultranationalist, Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863–1938) retreated here in 1922 because, he claimed, he wanted to escape the world that made him ill. Visits to d’Annunzio’s house are by guided 25-minute tour only (in Italian, every 10 minutes). The Museo della Guerra (War Museum) records d’Annunzio’s WWI antics – one of his most triumphant and more bizarre feats was to capture a battleship from the fledgling Yugoslavia shortly after WWI, when Italy’s territorial claims had been partly frustrated in postwar peace talks. In July and August, classical concerts, balle…
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Lake Como Day Trip from Milan
9 hours (Departs Milan, Italy)
by Viator
Explore scenic Lake Como in Italy's beautiful Lake District on a day trip from Milan. The fashionable lakeside town of Como is just a short drive from Milan, su…Not LP reviewed
from USD$87.68 -
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Casa Museo Boschi-Di Stefano
Milan’s best collection of 20th-century Italian painting is not proudly displayed in a purpose-built soaring white box. Somewhat tellingly, it’s crowded salon-style in a Piero Portaluppi-designed 1930s apartment that still has the appearance of the haute-bourgeois home it once was. It’s a heady art hit, with Boccioni’s dynamic brushstrokes propelling painting towards Futurism, the nostalgically metaphysical Campigli and De Chirico, and the restless, expressionist Informels all occupying a small space. Don’t miss the double-header of ''concetti spaziali'' (spacialist experiments) from Milan’s most important midcentury artists Fontana and Manzoni. The provocative slashed ca…
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Fondazione Prada
The Fondazione Prada produces two grand-scale, solo shows each year in an old warehouse that’s impressive enough to give you ‘art butterflies’ on its own. The likes of Anish Kapoor and Louise Bourgeois, or mid-career mavericks such as Francesco Vezzoli and Nathalie Djurberg, do the space justice. Tours of the foundation’s {{book-poi|9781741049947|1458138|new space}} ([tel] 02 535 70 9201; Largo Isarco 2; [hrs] by appointment; [metro] Lodi), due to open in 2011, are held periodically. A wander in the world’s most impressive stock room is worth the trip alone, but the official attraction is Rem Koolhaas’ obsessively detailed maquettes and 2D renderings of the former brandy …
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Peck
Forget The Last Supper: gourmands head to the food and wine emporium, Peck. This Milanese institution opened its doors as a deli in 1883. Since then, it’s expanded to a dining room–bar upstairs and an enoteca (wine bar). The Aladdin’s Cave–like food hall is smaller than its reputation suggests, but what it lacks in space it makes up for in variety, with some 3200 variations of parmigiano reggiano (Parmesan) at its cheese counter, just for starters. Other treasures include an exquisite array of chocolates, pralines and pastries; freshly made gelato; seafood; caviar; pâtés; a butcher; fruit and vegetables; truffle products; olive oils and balsamic vinegar.
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