Milan Sights

  1. Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea

    While most downtown galleries bank on international blue-chip artists, this plucky upstart still gambles on emerging Italian artists - and when it works, the payoff is that much greater (and the prices are better, too). Recent finds include Andrea Mastrovito's delicately outrageous Dracula-meets-Batman watercolours, and Luiggi Presicce's ghoulish toys.

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  2. 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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  3. Bisazza

    The first and last name in modern mosaics has opened a Milan showroom where tiny tesserae get together and stage riots of colour and pattern, then mysteriously cohere into a fluttering kelp forest, or luminous jellyfish trailing tentacles like royal trains.

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  4. Casa Fontana Silvestri

    Block out the Vespa traffic and shoppers hauling Dolce & Gabbana bags, and you can imagine from this classic Lombard edifice what this street must've looked like eight centuries ago. Ornamental cotto (baked clay) window frames attributed to Bramante grace the spare exterior, while scowling masks in the capitals above the stone door make a dramatic entrance.

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  5. Casa Museo Boschi di Stefano

    The next best thing to inheriting a wealthy, eccentric Milanese great-grandmother's art collection is visiting this charming flat packed with 300 paintings by 20th-century greats. See Paula Moderson-Becker's Expressionist girl sneaking sidelong glances, Umberto Boccini's dynamic brushstrokes propelling painting towards Futurism, Mario Sironi's brooding, fragmented post-war landscapes and Lucio Fontana's provocative slashed paintings.

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  6. Cimitero Monumentale

    Leave it to the Milanese to take grandeur to the grave. The striking white and black entryway is an 1866 Renaissance revival, raising the spirits and status of the notables interred in these sculpture-bedecked mausoleums. Even liquor magnate David Campari can hardly be bitter, with Giannino Castiglioni's impressive bronze Il Cenacolo for a headstone. Grab a leaflet inside the forecourt to guide you through this graveyard gallery.

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  7. Civico Acquario

    You'll be transfixed by the aquatic Art Nouveau façade, but kids will race ahead to see Lombardy's fish on display at Europe's third oldest aquarium. Turns out Lombard mountain streams and canals make for rather predictable silvery fish, but that only makes the red anemones more splashy, the archway of fish more dramatic, and the balletic boarfish become real prima donnas.

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  8. Da Driade

    Frescoed rooms present the ultimate design challenge - with all those cherubs flying around, suddenly that mod houndstooth sofa seems a bit much - but Da Driade rises to the occasion in its own converted neoclassical palazzo showroom with impeccable eclecticism, unconventional materials and top international designers.

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  9. Flos

    So this is what they mean by seeing things in a different light. The showroom floor here is surreal, with rice-paper lanterns that look like sea urchins, a desk lamp shaped like a chrome horn, and a floor lamp with a gold AK47 for a base that sheds a provocative light on any subject.

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  10. Fondazione Prada

    Big enough for a B52 or, say, a full-scale killer whale made of scavenged pieces of white foamcore by Tom Sachs, the Fondazione Prada produces two grand-scale, original solo shows each year. The Sachs show captured our touchy times with fragile giants dangerously near blunt tools, and a live-in control tower for a paranoiac complete with weather monitors, radar, guns, cigarettes and vodka.

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  11. Galleria Cardi & Co

    One of Milan's best-kept secrets is on a quiet street, through the courtyard and past garage doors: a polished concrete box often filled by Italy's most polished conceptual artists. Pier Paolo Calzolari recently showed lead and copper books slowly leaking saltwater onto white tablecloths, like fountains of knowledge reduced to tears.

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  12. Galleria Corsoveneziaotto

    Facelifts are unnecessary in Milan, because this gallery keeps eyebrows permanently up with sensations like Wim Delvoye's recent showcase of Milan's favourite media: pork. One whiff of his exquisite inlaid floor reveals that it was made entirely of Milanese salami, and taxidermied pigs tattooed with Louis Vuitton logos seem tailor-made to scandalise fashion-conscious Milan.

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  13. Galleria d'Arte Moderna

    Rush past the watchful eyes of Milanese neoclassical portraits and anatomically correct miniatures, upstairs past medieval Madonnas and lonesome Buddhas, and emerge facing Volpedo's pointillist marching workers in The Fourth Estate . From here, leapfrog the French Impressionists to Giacomo Balla's Futurist masterworks and Medardo Rosso's creepy, cackling wax children from the Palazzo Reale's 20th-century collection.

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  14. Galleria Milano

    There is no beauty without risk, as this modern gallery in a historic palazzo has proved for decades. The vaulted ceiling of the grand salon was recently repainted with what looked like heraldic patterns from afar, but on closer inspection turned out to be thousands of mosquitoes hand-drawn by contemporary artist Vincenzo Agnetti.

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  15. Giardini Pubblici

    A whole life story unfolds as you follow pebble paths past a kiddie carnival of bumper cars, bungee swings and a carousel, onward to pick-up games of footie, canoodling teens, a beer kiosk, baby prams, and jogging paths. Feel free to jump in wherever you like, or just stop and smell the roses.

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  16. Kartell

    Plastic hasn't got this much word of mouth since The Graduate . Philippe Starck brought Lucite and French baroque together at last in a clear plastic Ghost Chair perfect for post-revolutionary nobility experiencing cash-flow issues, while Missoni's starburst fabrics add more instant pop to plastic chair seats than a mislaid thumbtack.

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  17. Moroso

    You half expect to glimpse Van Gogh shooting pool in the corner of this vibrant green and red gallery, with its curvaceous lipstick-coloured Ron Arad armchairs, verdant Venus flytrap chair, and a couch spontaneously combusting into a swirling, unstable floral pattern of red, brown and turquoise.

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  18. Museo Bagatti Valsecchi

    Though born a few centuries too late, the Bagatti Valsecchi brothers were determined to be Renaissance men, and from 1878 to 1887 built their home as a living museum of the quattrocento . The dauntless interior decorators accepted no cheap reproductions, and collected authentic and painstakingly restored period pieces - hence the throne-like chairs and bathroom crucifixion triptych.

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  19. Museo Civico di Storia Naturale

    Only one word revives kids bored of shopping and sightseeing: dinosaurs! Seven of them are downstairs here at Italy's oldest museum, along with dino eggs, fossils and gems. Upstairs, old-fashioned zoology dioramas showcase eerily lifelike taxidermied critters, along with the latest insights about conservation and endangered species.

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  20. Museo Diocesano

    Don't be taken in by the false modesty of these tranquil white 16th-century cloisters: Milan's archdiocese has quite a collection, and knows how to put on a show. A recent exhibit spotlighted Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna, whose views of Jesus on the cross from the feet up established him as the reigning champion of extreme perspective.

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  21. Museo Inter e Milan

    Cartoonish papier-mâché dummies of 24 football stars add a little light humour to this shrine of testosterone, boasting nonstop match videos and trophies galore. The accompanying stadium tour covers the locker room, where you can rest your bum on the same bench as countless naked football legends. Before any stalkerish ideas come to mind: on game day, the museum closes 30mins before kickoff, and tours end early.

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  22. Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica

    Kids of every age ooh and ahh over the latest, greatest inventions from Leonardo da Vinci to today. Downstairs are spooky medieval forges, upstairs are robotics and models testing Leonardo's outlandish designs - those starched wings don't fly, but that anteater-shaped copper cooling device works. Out back is a train station full of steam engines and a 1940s submarine you can tour, if you book ahead.

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  23. Museo Poldi-Pezzoli

    This aesthetic treasure-trove, amassed by the incredibly wealthy Giacomo Poldi-Pezzoli in 1881, is filled with collections of jewellery, porcelain, sundials, tapestries, ancient armaments, period furniture and paintings. Botticelli's masterpiece, Madonna and Child , is alone worth the visit.

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  24. Museo Teatrale alla Scala

    'Untutored hands may not touch me', are the words of a true diva, inscribed here on an 18th-century spinette (piano). Harlequino costumes and playing cards left at La Scala also hint at centuries of Milanese musical drama. Portraits show Rossini chatting up patrons, while Verdi seems troubled by mixed reviews, and Callas a goddess towering above critique.

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  25. Nuova Fiera di Milano Rho-Pero

    Billowing glass sails by architect Massimiliano Fuksas ingeniously cover the oil stains where the Agip refinery once stood, and float over 1.3 kilometres of reclaimed exhibition space. A $750-million marvel of engineering made with 100,000 glass pieces, this magical megastructure levitates the bar for the Salone del Mobile and other events held here - and Italian architecture, too.

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