Sights in Milan
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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.
reviewed
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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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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.
reviewed
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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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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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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 …
reviewed
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Hangar Bicocca
To the north-east of the city centre is this stunning, multipurpose exhibition space of Hangar Bicocca, in a vast industrial site that once was the heart of the Pirelli company’s operations. Its smartly curated temporary shows are certainly worth a look, but the big, and we mean big, attraction is a permanent installation by German artist Anselm Kiefer. The seven concrete-and-lead towers of The Seven Heavenly Palaces are a teetering 15m tall, tucked under the dark blue canopy of the 7000-sq-metre space. The precarious, ruined shells invoke the mythical, mystical yearning of their title as well as the abject destruction of postwar Europe.
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Prometeo Gallery
First up is the Prometeo Gallery specialising in screen-based art. Further on, the multilevel gallery Massimo de Carlo is entered via a bridge that gives a full view of the stockroom innards. This Via Ventura pioneer is a must-see, for the stellar line-up of artists - Diego Perrone, Simone Berti, Pei-Ming Yan - as well as the architecturally thoughtful space. In the same complex is the ever-challenging Zero and Art Book Milano. Via Massimiano is home to Francesca Minini and Klerkx, both showing intriguing new-generation work.
reviewed
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Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa
If you’ve ever contemplated the long desert drive to Marfa, Texas to see the work of American sculptor Dan Flavin, a metro trip to the end of the green line won’t seem like too much of an effort. The suburban Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, an airy 1930s church, contains his last work, designed shortly before his death in 1996. The arrangement of red, yellow and blue fluorescent lights across the altar, apse and transept is a subtle work - the life and clutter of an everyday church goes on beneath it - but its mix of the formal and the emotional is all the more powerful for its setting.
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New Space (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 new space, 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 factory’s brave new future.
reviewed
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Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio
St Ambrose, Milan’s patron saint and one-time superstar bishop, is buried in the crypt of the mainly 11th-century Romanesque Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio, which he founded in AD 379. It’s a fitting legacy, built and rebuilt with a purposeful simplicity that is truly uplifting: the seminal Lombard Romanesque basilica. Shimmering altar mosaics and a biographical AD 835 gilt altarpiece light up the shadowy vaulted interior. Along the south aisle, there’s some precious 5th-century sparkle. Mosaics adorn the ''Sacello San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro'', its ‘golden sky’ dome supported by winged monkeys and griffins.
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Teatro alla Scala
The austere facade of Milan’s legendary opera house, Teatro alla Scala (La Scala) seems at odds with its sumptuous six-tiered interior, all chandeliers and scarlet-silk-lined private boxes. The disparity came about because at the time it was built in 1778, it was on a narrow street blocked by houses, making it impossible to admire the facade in any case. These have since been demolished to create the square out front, Piazza della Scala, revealing the underwhelming frontage.
Attending a performance is incredible. Otherwise, you can peek inside as part of a visit to the in-house Museo Teatrale alla Scala, provided there are no performances or rehearsals in progress. On t…
reviewed
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Livia Simoni Library
Harlequin costumes and a spinet inscribed with the command ‘Inexpert hand, touch me not!’ hint at centuries of Milanese musical drama, on and off stage. Portraits show Rossini apparently chatting up patrons, while Verdi seems troubled by mixed reviews, and Callas, ever the goddess, rises above it all. Your visit can include a glimpse of the theatre’s famed interior from a box and a backstage tour if you don’t clash with rehearsal time. The museum’s Livia Simoni Library beckons buffs who want more.
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Teatro la Scala Musuem
Harlequin costumes and a spinet inscribed with the command ‘Inexpert hand, touch me not!’ hint at centuries of Milanese musical drama, on and off stage. Portraits show Rossini apparently chatting up patrons, while Verdi seems troubled by mixed reviews, and Callas, ever the goddess, rises above it all. Your visit can include a glimpse of the theatre’s famed interior from a box and a backstage tour if you don’t clash with rehearsal time. The museum’s Livia Simoni Library beckons buffs who want more.
reviewed
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Palazzo Reale
Empress Maria Theresa’s favourite architect Giuseppe Piermarini gave this old town hall and Visconti palace a neoclassical overhaul in the late 18th century. Its supremely elegant interiors were all but destroyed by WWII bombs; the Sala delle Cariatidi remains unrenovated as a grim reminder of war’s indiscriminate destruction. The palazzo has a small permanent art collection, but brings in the crowds with blockbuster shows from artists as diverse as Balla, Bacon and Vivienne Westwood.
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Villa Necchi Campiglio
Set in a huge garden with a swimming pool, tennis court and tall magnolia trees, this 1932 Piero Portaluppi-designed house is a symbol of the city’s industrial wealth and modernist imaginings. The superbly refurbished interiors are redolent of the Necchi sisters’ privileged lifestyle, with a profusion of intriguing domestic detail, while the walls are hung with a collection of 20th-century Italian paintings. The garden restaurant opens until 9pm most evenings.
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San Babila
Built on the site of a 2nd-century pagan temple, this squat church has suffered at the hands of overzealous renovators (the last add-on being the Neo-Romanesque facade and bell tower early last century). Still, it exerts a calm force amid the swirling visual din of supersized billboards, office blocks and ever-flowing traffic of the piazza, and its lily-scented interior is a serene respite. The Venetian lion-topped column at the entrance dates back to 1656.
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Museo Teatrale alla Scala
Attending a performance here is incredible. Otherwise, you can also just peek inside as part of a visit to the in-house Museo Teatrale alla Scala, provided there are no performances or rehearsals in progress. On the museum’s ground floor is a chronologically arranged collection of opera-related items, including original advertising posters and the death mask and hand cast of Giuseppe Verdi, who premiered numerous operas here.
reviewed
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Galleria Lia Rumma
In an inversion of north-south convention, this is the Milanese outpost of Lia Rumma’s Neapolitan gallery. An early collector of Arte Povera, Rumma’s curatorial vision is legend and her international stable impressive: Marina Abromovic, Anslem Kiefer, Andreas Gursky and Peter Halley. She also shows high-profile Italians - look out for Ottonella Mocelli, Franco Scognamiglio and increasingly queasy-making Vanessa Beecroft.
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Museo Civico di Storia Naturale
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.
reviewed
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Palazzo della Ragione
Founded in 1228 to handle deals brokered and broken in this merchants' piazza, this elegant colonnaded hall of justice bears Milan's bristled boar insignia in terracotta. Empress Maria Theresa added a layer of bricks and bureaucracy with an archive of officially notarised papers, which piled up until 1961. Now the Palazzo hosts temporary exhibitions that don't mind being upstaged by their surroundings.
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Artemide
Aesthetically inclined genies everywhere would like to announce that they're done with the whole brass oil-lamp schtick, and would appreciate if you'd rub on an Artemide next time you want a wish granted. Giancarlo Matteoli's 1965 blue mushroom-shaped Nesso table lamp would be ideal, and the Dalú transparent orange plastic study light shaped like hoodie sweatshirt would suit a smallish sprite.
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San Maurizio
Through a door by the altar lies Milan's hidden crown jewel: the restored 16th-century royal chapel. Bernardino Luini's breathtaking frescoes immortalise the star of Milan's literary scene at the time, Ippolita Sforza, and her family, alongside amazingly blissful martyred women saints - note Santa Lucia calmly holding her lost eyes, and Santa Agata casually carrying her breasts on a platter.
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