Italy
Milan
La Scala, a Last Supper you need to book months ahead and design week
An opera house that functions as a national institution, a mural in a refectory that takes months to book and one week in April when every courtyard becomes a gallery.
Milan is a working city that takes its culture seriously twice a year and quietly all the time. La Scala remains the most demanding opera house in the world, largely because of the loggione, the cheap upper gallery whose regulars have been booing under-prepared tenors since the eighteenth century. Its season opens every year on the seventh of December with an event the country watches on television.
The single most-requested object in the city is Leonardo's Last Supper, which survives on the wall of a refectory next to Santa Maria delle Grazie in conditions that permit twenty-five people at a time for fifteen minutes. Tickets go on sale in blocks and disappear within hours; there is no way around this, only ahead of it.
Then there is April. Design week turns the courtyards, showrooms and disused factories of the entire city into installations, most of them free, most of them unmarked on any map, and for six days Milan becomes the best walking exhibition in Europe. The rest of the year the Fondazione Prada campus carries that energy on its own.
The day
Milan hour by hour
When things open, when they fill and when the city changes shift.
- 08:15First Last Supper slot. Fifteen minutes, twenty-five people, booked months ahead.
- 10:00Brera and the Museo del Novecento open with a view over the cathedral square.
- 18:30Aperitivo, which in this city counts as a cultural institution with its own rules.
- 20:00Curtain at La Scala. Late arrivals are not admitted, and the loggione will let you know.
- 23:30Clubs in Tortona and along the canals open properly.
The quarters
Where to walk
Four districts that between them cover most of what matters.
Brera
The pinacoteca, the art academy and the streets where the galleries have been since the eighteenth century.
Porta Nuova and Isola
Towers, the Fondazione Riccardo Catella gardens and the new money that pays for the new art.
Navigli
Canals, aperitivo, and the design week installations that take over the courtyards each April.
Zona Tortona and Fondazione Prada
An old distillery turned into a campus with a gold-leaf tower and a bar designed by Wes Anderson.
The venues
7 rooms in Milan
Museums
MuseumMilan · Brera
Pinacoteca di Brera
Napoleon's art seizures, hung above a working art academy
MuseumMilan · Largo Isarco
Fondazione Prada
A 1910 gin distillery turned into a campus, with one tower covered in gold leaf
MuseumMilan · Piazza del Duomo
Museo del Novecento
Italian twentieth-century art in a fascist-era palace, with a window onto the cathedral
Opera and Ballet
Live Rooms and Clubs
Plan it
Forty-eight hours in Milan
Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, built from the venues above.
Questions
How far ahead must I book the Last Supper?
Tickets are released in batches, usually two to three months ahead, and the good slots go in minutes. Set a reminder for the release date, and check for returns the week before you travel.
Can I get into La Scala at short notice?
Yes, through the same-day gallery queue at the side entrance on via Filodrammatici. Arrive early, dress tidily and expect to stand.
Is design week worth planning a trip around?
If you care about objects and interiors, it is the best week of the year in any city on this list, and most of it costs nothing. Book a hotel four months out.
Next
Other cities
86Germany
Berlin
Three opera houses, five museums on one island and a club that never asks the time
85United Kingdom
London
The greatest free collections on earth and the most expensive tickets in Europe
82France
Paris
The museum as a state religion, and an opera house built to be looked at
85United States
New York
Broadway, the Met and a downtown that reinvents the rules every decade