Milan hides its art behind plain façades: a nun's church frescoed floor to ceiling on Corso Magenta, a 1935 villa with its cigarette boxes still out, a gin distillery rebuilt by OMA. Three days of the city's own canon, not the postcard one.
Italy's 20th-century collection spirals up the Palazzo dell'Arengario: Boccioni's Futurist canvases, Fontana's slashed monochromes and his neon ceiling spiral, framed by glass looking straight at the cathedral. Open 10:00–19:30, closed Monday.
Piero Portaluppi's 1935 Rationalist villa for a sewing-machine dynasty survives intact: heated pool, veneered smoking room, Morandi still lifes and Sironi drawings. Run by FAI, open Wed–Sun 10:00–18:00, last entry 17:00.
OMA converted a 1910 gin distillery in Largo Isarco into ten buildings, including a gold-leafed Haunted House holding Robert Gober's work and Anselm Kiefer's concrete towers in the courtyard. Open 10:00–19:00, closed Tuesday.
Stefano Boeri's two Vertical Forest towers carry roughly 800 trees across their balconies, rising above Piazza Gae Aulenti's raised deck and Pelli's UniCredit spire — the post-2015 skyline that redrew northern Milan.
A 19th-century nobleman's apartment left as he furnished it: Pollaiuolo's Portrait of a Young Woman, Botticelli and Mantegna panels, Lombard clocks and armour, all reached by a gilded neo-Baroque stair with a fountain.
Milan's oldest pasticceria, founded in 1824 and restored by Prada, sells panettone year-round and a dense marzipan torta beneath mint-green boiserie. Locals stand at the marble counter rather than sitting down.
Cardinal Federico Borromeo's 1618 library and gallery holds Caravaggio's only still life, the Basket of Fruit, Raphael's full-scale cartoon for the School of Athens and rotating leaves from Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus.
Same-day sixth-tier loggione seats go on sale at the side box office two hours before curtain for around €13. These benches above the stage are where Milanese regulars sit and audibly deliver their verdict.
An open-air sculpture museum since 1866: Art Nouveau family chapels, the spiralling Bernocchi funerary tower, Giò Ponti and Lucio Fontana tombs, and Italy's first Holocaust memorial. Open Tue–Sun 08:00–18:00.
Europe's oldest Chinatown, settled by Zhejiang silk workers in the 1920s, is now a pedestrianised street of jianbing griddles, bubble tea and Ravioleria Sarpi, whose dumplings are filled with meat from the butcher next door.
Bernardino Luini and his sons frescoed every surface of this 1503 Benedictine nun's church behind a blank Corso Magenta wall. The Roman-era tower behind it anchors the Civico Museo Archeologico next door.
The Negroni Sbagliato was invented here in 1972 when a bartender reached for spumante instead of gin. Salone del Mobile designers still spill onto the pavement each April, and the goblets hold close to half a litre.