Milano Design Week

The Salone del Mobile fills a vast exhibition ground outside the city with trade stands, and almost nobody comes for that. The reason to be here is the Fuorisalone: several hundred installations in courtyards, showrooms, disused factories, churches and private palazzi across the whole city, most of them free and unmarked on any official map.

For six days Milan is the best walking exhibition in Europe. Districts organise themselves loosely: Brera, Tortona, Isola and Alcova, which takes over a different abandoned site each year.