A Travel Guide for Fashion, Food, and Culture Lovers

Words by Adriana Bishop

The ultimate Milan city break for fashionistas and culture lovers begins here. Italy’s financial powerhouse and design hub is also the gateway to the rest of Europe, with excellent train connections to Paris, Zurich, and beyond. But first, there’s this handbag in the window…

…and I have been drooling at it for the past five minutes. It is exquisite. Stylishly sophisticated. Effortlessly elegant. An ode to craftsmanship and design. Butter soft leather with gold detailing. And would match with everything. And it’s eye-wateringly expensive. Or, to put it differently, it’s the equivalent of two months’ salary, or possibly three.

I sigh longingly and move on. Welcome to Milan. The capital of fashion and design, where money struts around on designer stilettos, and if you need to ask the price, then you probably can’t afford it. Milan does not need to introduce itself. It makes its own statement in just one word: Milano. The economic powerhouse of Italy, it hasn’t just taken a seat at the table of global cities – it has designed its own chair. Milan has been on the frow of European political, economic and cultural history since the ancient Romans established it
as the capital of the Western Roman Empire.

Today, it is Italy’s wealthiest city, second only to Rome in terms of population and as a tourist destination. It presents itself with the chutzpah of a grande dame who has lived a long and colourful life, with no apologies, and is ready to continue setting standards for everyone else to follow. My taxi driver tells me “they are trying to transform it into a little London” and bemoans the rising cost of living, but he confesses he is “still in love with her”. 

While it is the undisputed queen of design, Milan is more than just the Quadrilatero della Moda, that block of uber-expensive and uber-gorgeous designer shops along the city’s four most famous streets: Via della Spiga, Via Montenapoleone, Corso Venezia and Via Manzoni.

I have been a regular visitor to the city for several years as I am lucky enough to have a direct train from Zurich, which brings me to the Italian city (and a much longed for MiTo in the sun, the iconic cocktail made from Vermouth Rosso and Campari) in just over three hours.

On one of my earliest trips, I joined three other friends, all new mothers like me, giddy with delight at being let off mum duties for 48 hours. We snuck a bottle of prosecco on board our early morning train and giggled like schoolgirls all the way across the Alps as we wrote down an extensive list of all the shops we wanted to visit.

Our annual girls’ trip to Milan is now a fixture on the calendar, and I must confess that I probably know a lot more about the retail side of the city than any of its cultural attributes (insert embarrassed emoji here). I suspect I am not the only one. With the exception of the throngs of tourists who queue patiently under a baking hot sun to visit the Duomo and book tickets several months in advance to view Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, I am certain the majority of Milan’s visitors have only one thing on their itinerary: shopping.

Which is a pity, because the city is home to some of Italy’s, if not Europe’s, most important museums and cultural sites, dominated by that breathtaking confection of gothic marble that is the Duomo, with its forest of spires and blindingly white façade, which shines as bright as the moon on a summer evening.

Now, I am not a complete heathen, and on occasion I have dragged myself away from those credit-card-draining shops to feast my eyes and feed my soul on some of Europe’s finest art and culture. The Pinacoteca di Brera art museum is a veritable balm for the senses.

In recent years, I have taken to wandering around this immensely walkable city, following my curiosity rather than Google Maps, to discover hidden gems behind monumental palazzo doors, not to mention quirky little bars that only the locals know about, like the Renault showroom that serves excellent drinks.

It was on one such walk that I came across the Museo Bagatti Valsecchi, the 19th-century former house of two wealthy brothers, the barons Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi, who stuffed their home (read: mansion) between Via Gesù and Via Santo with a collection of artwork and treasures that is still the envy of billionaires today. There was only one other person viewing the house that afternoon, and for those precious moments, we could pretend we were the owners, floating through jaw-dropping riches in perfect silence, away from the madding crowd outside.

In fact, one of the joys of visiting museums in Milan is purely the opportunity to escape the masses and indulge in true cultural R&R.

One sweltering August afternoon, an Italian friend suggested we should visit the local cemetery. Before I could protest, she had bundled me into a taxi for a quick whizz across town to the Cimitero Monumentale, one of the two largest cemeteries in Italy. I would have never considered adding this to my holiday must-see sites until I learnt that it is a true testament to Milan-ness, an intrinsic part of the city’s history as the final resting place of all Milan’s great and good from the world of arts and culture, including Alessandro Manzoni, Dario Fo, Giorgio Gaber, and the celebrated prima ballerina Carla Fracci, to name but a few. They are all hosted at the Famedio, better known as the Temple of Fame.

After a contemplative hour tiptoeing past ornate marble gravestones, I was ready to go back to a more contemporary, living shrine to Milan-ness, and hopped into another taxi towards Fondazione Prada, housed in a converted distillery, with its iconic solid gold façade (hence the heavy security presence outside) and its whimsical Bar Luce designed by Californian director Wes Anderson. All this sightseeing and shopping (it’s a sport, you know) has made me hungry, and Milan does food on the same scale it does fashion – with inimitable style. I had already spotted a queue outside Louis Vuitton’s Da Vittorio Café, nestled in the former courtyard of Palazzo Taverna on Via Montenapoleone. But that’s too nouveau riche for me (or, put simply, my writer’s fee does not stretch that far). I prefer to stick to the classics and head to Cova, a 200-year-old institution, for a cup of coffee and a slice of tradition, before crossing the road to Marchesi to stock up on my favourite pastel-coloured sugared almonds. I keep a bag in my desk drawer to see me through long newsroom shifts.

Aperitivo time is elevated to aperi-cena here, my favourite hour of the day, where cocktails are served with free plates of delectable pieces of focaccia, olives, cold cuts and whatever the bar fancies. It’s free, so I never complain. This evening, I am meeting a group of friends from London at Casa Lucia in the De Angeli area for a taste of authentic Italian deliciousness, served with a side of flair. We’re a rowdy bunch, excited to see each other after long months away, but it is the next table that apologises to us because their baby is crying. We burst out laughing as we are all parents ourselves and we are definitely louder than this little newborn. We soon find out they are a family celebrating the baby’s baptism and, of course, they are doing it in style, especially the ladies who look like they’ve just stepped off a catwalk. The proud grandpa welcomes us cheerily and heartily to Italy and we’re all firm friends now. No Saturday night is complete without a stroll along the Navigli canals to soak up the movida nightlife, which can sometimes get a little bit too exciting. But it seems that, these days, the movida travels across the city on board disco trams. One of them pumps and rattles along the street, packed with party people bobbing along to a funky DJ. Hey, wait for me! We retire to a quiet, unassuming roadside vineria for that one last drink (or three); a little hole in the wall with tables crafted out of oversized wine barrels. Good company, good wine, good cheer at that precise moment, there was nothing else I needed in life. Perhaps the cherry on the cake of a visit to Milan is a ticket to La Scala, the most famous opera house in the world. So revered is this theatre in Italy that the season opener on 7th December, the feast day of St Ambrose, Milan’s patron saint, is broadcast live on the national TV station Rai and is attended by both the President and the Prime Minister alongside a full cast of celebrities and illustri. For me, nothing is more magical than a night at La Scala, and I was recently treated to a most memorable evening watching the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Antonio Pappano. I think I shall frame the ticket I like to end every visit to Milan with lunch on one of the rooftop restaurants above La Rinascente, always hoping for a coveted table along the edge with the best view of the Duomo. But first, I earn my risotto Milanese with a final walk, negotiating my way through the crowds inside the opulent Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, trying not to stop too long to admire the first edition art books at Libreria Bocca, the oldest bookstore in Italy. I step out onto the expansive Piazza Duomo, take the obligatory selfie, and head towards the medieval Sforza Castle. I could spend all day in here, wandering through its eight museums. But, as always, I am tight for time and I am kicking myself that my vanity had clouded my judgement when I failed to pack more sensible shoes instead of my flimsy (but stylish hey, it’s Milan after all) sandals.

A weekend in Milan is never enough although my credit card would claim otherwise. But I know it will always be there, even if only for a quick lunch stop on my way to visit Torino, Como, my beloved Bologna, Florence or even Venice. And with one last Campari Spritz, I bid arrivederci to a city that will never go out of style.

KM Malta Airlines operates regular flights from Malta International Airport (MLA) to Milan Linate (LIN) Airport.. Find best fares, here.