Tag: Milan

Guide For A City Break To Milan

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When it comes to travelling throughout Italy, it sounds like the most romantic holiday getaway and you might leave many jealous. Between Rome, Naples, Milan and more, it can be a daunting task trying to make sure you see all the best parts of each. Not familiar with some of them? No problem! It can be time consuming to look into each of them, so check out this easy to digest guide to a city break in Milan to help you plan the ultimate visit to this beautiful and fashionable northern Italian city. So get your taxi booked and hit the town – this is one place you will want to visit time and again!

Churches

If there’s one thing that Italy is famous for, it’s churches. While many think about the likes of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, but Milan has a whole variety of churches which are beautiful and welcome visitors. In fact, there’s so many that you probably won’t have time to see them all unless you’re a real church aficionado, but if you want to see at least one, make it the Duomo. The Duomo is Milan’s main cathedral and at around 800 years old, it’s one of the oldest. Visitors can climb to the top for some spectacular views around the piazza it’s built on. If you like artwork and architecture though, check out the Saint Mary of the Graces church – home to some impressive examples of renaissance art, sculpture and paintings. It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site and entry is free.

Squares

It’s no surprise that Milan would be a city of squares – and we don’t mean the eating kind. Town squares, known as piazzas in Italy, are beautiful open spaces often with fountains, cafes and restaurants, usually home to a church or two and often paved with marble tiles or the like. The resulting feel is a cosmopolitan and beautiful example of architecture and building ideas that allow for an open air meeting space of locals and tourists alike. One of the most popular Milan piazzas is the Piazza Mercati, a beautiful medieval style square that comes alive with lights and music at Christmas time with a small market. The rest of the year you can enjoy the gorgeous examples of Italian homes that are on display before sampling some of the cuisine or gelato off the square in one of the shops or restaurants. You can book a great Milan tour to make sure you see a few more of the special sites including other piazzas and points of interest as well.

Shopping

Milan is essentially the heart of the Italian fashion scene and it hosts the world famous Milan Fashion Week each autumn. This is the big fashion party of the year where up and coming models can make their debut and popular fashion houses like Gucci, Versace and others showcase their new creations. If you can’t make it for fashion week (good luck getting tickets!), check out the shopping district for your own look at the fashions of Milan. Via Dante is the street you will want to hit as its home to some of the world’s most high end designers and their street level shops. It’s a great place just to wander around as well though because with all sorts of street vendors, street art and food it’s a lively street that blends a number of styles and curiosities.

So if you’ve been looking for a great way to spend your summer getaway, have a look at Milan. You won’t be disappointed!

Tips on how to move in Milan

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Have you ever dreamt to move to Italy? This city of over 1.3million people has a lot to offer.

Milan is unique and marvelous, a metropolis at a fast pace where creativity is part of a large market. In no other Italian city does the fashion world have as much importance as in Milan.

1) Very good possibilities to get around

No doubt is that Milan is cheaper for the cost of living than London. If you move to Milan, you will find that public transport costs are fairly low and that you can choose to use trains, trams, buses and subways to get around. The Milan underground map and information brochure can help you. Car insurance can be expensive, but the city offers excellent bike and car sharing services, which also help to reduce environmental pollution.

More and more it is possible to walk and visit Milan in a single day, especially because of the pedestrian islands that are constantly built The dock and the area of the Navigli, on foot are very comfortable and both in winter and summer immerse yourself in the Parco Sempione passing from the Castello Sforzesco to the Arco della Pace, is a spectacle.

More intimate and romantic is a walk in the Brera district, among narrow streets curiously populated by fortune-tellers and fashionable Milanese, while some painters perform their works of painting.

2) Walking through the historic centre of Milan

To explore the historic centre of Milan, which is not so vast, the best way to do so is to walk around the city, sifting through streets and squares without haste, and walking through the most famous touristic spots like the Duomo with its grandiose square; the Palazzo Reale; the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and the Teatro alla Scala; the Pinacoteca di Brera; the Castello Sforzesco; the Basilicas of Sant’Ambrogio and last but not least: the Santa Maria delle Grazie church where you can visit Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece “The last supper”.

Milan is a city in the process of depollution and therefore personal vehicles are strongly discouraged, if not even penalized in favor of completely environmentally friendly bicycles. In this respect, the municipality makes public bicycles available to all through so-called “bike sharing”. It is possible to subscribe to a monthly or annual subscription at ATMs, allowing access to more than 1500 bicycles to complement the public transport service.

3) High speed ways to move around

High-speed trains, flights and motorways ensure good connections with other countries and other major Italian cities. When you live in Milan you are only 45 minutes from Lake Como, Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore. It is also possible to visit the beautiful Ligurian coast or ski in the Alps. The city of Milan is a wonderful place for shopping, visiting museums and parks. You can discover the activities to do during your free time in Milan on turismo.milan.it.

4) A day in Milan: the surroundings

If you arrive in the city to go to visit Milan in a day, or returning home, we want to take a look at its surroundings, there are three fascinating destinations because to happen in Milan without being aware of touching them, it would be a shame.

One is the Abbey of Chiaravalle, always within the city limits, and then there is another Abbey, that of Viboldone, near San Giuliano Milanese, one of the most important medieval complexes in Lombardy. Further away, but if you arrive from that direction, do not miss the Taccani hydroelectric plant in Trezzo sull’Adda, historical and interesting.

For those who are not willing to customize their itineraries and are lazy in their establishment, can take advantage of the modern and colorful buses of Lombardy City Sightseeing, complete with drivers and hostesses in uniform, disposable earphones and commentary in eight languages.