Milanese Musicale

Milan is Italy's economic powerhouse, a bustling city of finance and industries, media empires, and fashion houses, backed by an impressive cultural heritage of important art galleries and ancient churches. Yet, a 40-minute train ride takes you to the azure pools of "The Lakes," lined with fishing villages, villas, and laid-back resorts. So, what do you do?

You can wander freely about the forest of Gothic carvings adorning the rooftop of its cathedral. Or, go wild on a shopping spree in the world capital of high fashion and top names in haute couture. After 5pm, go on a café crawl, because Milanese bars and cafés have this lovely practice of laying out platters of mini-sandwiches, canapés, olives, crisps, and other snacks at the bar, all free for the munching as long as you order at least one drink. You can easily flit from one bar to the next and make an early dinner out of it or spend an evening on the Navigli Milan's southern district of canals and warehouses that has been converted to a lively evening area of restaurants, pizzerias, bars, pubs, and funky shops. After dinner, spend the night at the opera. Once Italy's premier opera house emerges from restoration in 2005, you can enjoy one of the world's best companies in a 18th-century setting.(The temporary venue is at Teatro degli Archimboldi.)

For a break from the city, take a cruise on one of the loveliest of the Italian lakes, Como, whose sights are best enjoyed on the waters. From this vantage point, free from traffic jams, you can see the glorious gardens and gracious villas lining its banks (from the road, you'll probably see only high walls!)

In summer, local tourist offices supply maps of mountain trails, ranging in length from 15 minutes to 2 hours or more. Take your pick of a goal destination, be it a ruined castle, medieval church, surging mountain stream, or prehistoric rock carvings. And why not make a day out of the latter-prehistoric Camuni tribes etched many rock faces in the pre-Alpine valleys of eastern Lombardy with curious figurative images and symbols. The oldest date from 11,000 years ago while the most recent are medieval. Most carvings are in Val Calmonica. However, if you're on Lake Garda, detour at Torri del Benaco to the hillside hamlet of Crer, where a trail leads to some nice carvings.

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Milan for a song? Here are tips to get around on the cheap.

Churches are free and house some of the greatest art and architecture, although the best chapels do require some payment. However, you can enjoy front-row seats for the price of a cappuccino, watching the daily drama in the piazzas. Discount admissions to sights and museums have different age cut-offs, and some are just for students or seniors, but all national museums are free for everyone under 18 and over 60, except US citizens. Buy a Carte Verde for about 13€ if you're under 18 and enjoy a 30% discount on any train ticket; the same for people over 60 is the Carte Argento.
Accommodation costs rise the closer you are to the town centre, but if you settle for a two-star hotel, it is far better than looking outside the centre or in the seedy, but cheap train station area.
The price or category of a restaurant has little to do with the quality of food, so a cheaper osteria or trattoria can be as tasty an option as a fancy ristorante. Beware: the appetisers tend to cost as much as first courses.

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Located on the northwest side of the historic centre of Milan, it is an odd combination of oversized courtyards, lithe towers, and lovely medieval nooks and crannies. This massive, sun-baked rectangular bastion was built in 1451 for Francesco Sforza. Largely restored in 1893 to1904, and again after massive World War II damage, its many collections include art and sculpture from the early Middle Ages to the 18th century, decorative arts, musical instruments, Oriental art, and archaeology-all free of charge.

Some pieces of note at the Castello include "Rondanini Pietà". Michelangelo started his career with a Pietà carving at the age of 25 (now in St. Peter’s in Rome). And while the master was famous for not finishing his statues, in the case of the Pietà found here, it was not his fault when, at the age of 89 in 1564, he was struck down (probably by a stroke) literally while chipping away at the sculpture.

Be sure to see the funerary monument to Faston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, Marshall of France, ruler of the French Milan Duchy, post-humus hero of the 1512 Battle of Ravennna, and Louis XII’s nephew. The tomb’s ethereally sculpted elements, carved in 1510 by Bambaia, have all been scattered. Commissioned by King Francis I for the young hero, Bambaia executed an effigy of the warrior lying in state and beautiful high-relief panels. When the French pulled out of Milanese affairs in 1522, the tomb was left unfinished. The pieces were sold off and wound up in Turin, London, and the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.

On the first floor toward the right wing, you will find a curious little portrait by the Milan-born Giuseppe Archimboldo, who has a very distinctive style of painting metaphoric "portraits." Up close, the painting looks to be a greengrocer’s dream or a page out of a florists’ catalogue, but moving away from it, a human head appears. It was made entirely of fruits and flowers of the season to personify spring in a human profile.

Along the same wall, you will find a "Madonna and Child", an early Bellini piece executed between 1468 and 1470. Mary is depicted with touching detail, wearing a pearl-trimmed pink shawl whilst the infant Jesus gazes at a lemon in his hand. Just around the corner from this piece is another Bellini artwork of a poet laureate, whose portrait shows an almost Flemish attention to detail in the hair and eyes of the subject.

Also housed in the Castello is Bramantino’s "Trivulzio Tapestries of the Twelve Months," designed in 1503 and named for the man who commissioned them, General Gian Giacomo Trivulzio.

This is open daily between 9am and 5:30pm. Although admission to the museum is free, there are special conducted tours, often in the evenings, that get you into the many non-museum sections of the castle normally closed to the public, and if you’re lucky, sometimes up to the battlements themselves.

The 20th-century writer Aldous Huxley called it "the saddest work of art in the world," referring not to the impact of the scene when Christ tells his disciples, "one of you will betray me," but to the fresco’s state of deterioration.

One of the largest and most ingenious works created by the ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo Da Vinci’s 1495 to 1497 masterpiece is the most talked-about artwork after his "Mona Lisa", following the release of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Since it was finished, art students have journeyed to Milan to view the work, which takes up a refectory wall in a Dominican convent next to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

The painting has many dimensions, and the life-size depiction adds to the realism of the scene. The figures are grouped in a triangular Trinity formation (with Jesus in the middle).

The walls of the room in the painting appear to be continuations of the walls of the actual room you are standing in. The lines zoom in on Christ at the centre, drawing your eye towards his and helping to heighten the drama. Note the effects of the carefully worked interaction between the three sources of light-from the refectory itself, the windows painted in the background, and from the windows on the refectory’s left wall. Another detail that increases the illusion of reality is the colours of the disciples’ robes reflected in the glasses and pewter plates on the table.

Christ is set in front of a window, giving him the requisite halo effect without making it look as if he’s wearing a plate for a hat. Previously, Judas was often placed across the table from everyone else, but Leonardo’s approach positioned the traitor right among the other disciples.

Rather than paint in buon fresco (the method of applying pigment to wet plaster so that the colours bind with the base), Leonardo used oil paint on semi-dry plaster. Unfortunately, this technique caused the painting to deteriorate even before he had finished the work. To worsen matters, Napoleon’s troops used the fresco for target practice, and bombs during the Second World War destroyed the building’s roof. A recent restoration removed centuries of over-painting by early "restorers" and filled in the completely vanished bits with pale washes.

The painting is so popular that it is advisable to book at least two days or a week ahead of your visit during the spring season-or be disappointed. It is open between Tuesday and Sunday between 8am and 7:30pm. It costs 6,50€, plus a 1€ booking fee. It is free to all EU citizens under 18 or over 65. There is an informative audio guide, which helps to explain why such a deteriorated fresco is nevertheless so important. And a few blocks from Via Magenta at Via Carducci 13 is a Bar Magenta, which takes up a wide corner and is a pleasing blend of Art Nouveau café and Guinness pub.

There is no better example of Milanese tenacity than the fact that their cathedral is a completely unspoiled example of Gothic style, despite taking a full 427 years to build. Generations of builders resisted every new style that came along, from Renaissance, to baroque, and then to neoclassical. The phrase la fabricca del Duomo in Milanese dialect is still used to refer to anything that seems to take forever to complete.

Began in 1386, the neo-Gothic finishings were only added to its façade in 1813 under Napoleon. From the 16th century, top architects submitted designs for the façade, but it wasn’t until 1805 to 1813 that the bronze doors and reliefs were finally built. In 2002, the Duomo’s exterior underwent scaffolding for a major cleaning set to last a few years.

The world's largest Gothic cathedral, the second biggest in Italy and the third largest in the world, has more than 3,500 exterior statues. The interior is a thicket of 52 pilasters ringed with statues of saints in niches. The Gothic tracery is actually ingenious trompe l’oeil paintings dating from the 16th century. The dimness helps the illusion.

Battistero Paleocristiano is to the left of the entrance, where excavations uncovered traces of Roman baths from the 1st century, a baptistery from AD 287, and a 4th-century basilica. To the right, you will see stained-glass windows, which create splashes of coloured light in the otherwise gloomy interior. The oldest, on the right aisle, date from 1470; the newest from 1988.

The funerary monument to Gian Giacomo Medici, on the right transept, was created by Leone Leoni from 1560 1563. It is a life-size bronze statue of the man dressed in Roman armour. Just beyond the monument is Marco d’Agrate’s gruesome carving of 1562, which depicts the flaying of Saint Bartholomew with his muscles and veins exposed and his flayed skin thrown over one shoulder.

The ambulatory towards the back is open only to worshippers, but you can see a lovely example of a 14th-century Lombard sacristy door. Stairs nearby lead down into the crypt, where the body of Saint Charles Borromeo rests in a crystal coffin.

The roof is accessible by stairs (or lift) and worth the climb, as it gives you an unfettered panoramic view of the Piazza below. The roof boasts a Gothic crown of spires, gargoyles, statues, and tracery. Perched on top of the Duomo’s central spire, standing 108m above ground, is the gilded copper "Little Madonna." It has been watching over Milan since 1774 and, for centuries, was the highest point until the Pirelli Tower stole that title.

Free to enter between 7am and 7pm daily. Access to roof is daily, 9am to 5:45pm (except February 16 to November 14, when it closes at 4:15pm). The cost is 5€ by lift and 3€ by stairs. You cannot enter the cathedral with bare shoulders or shorts and skirt that are above mid-thigh.

Milan’s Centro Storico, or historic centre, is where the world's largest Gothic cathedral stands. It’s home to the much-celebrated La Scala opera house, art-filled private mansions, the royal palace, a most elegant shopping arcade, and busy pedestrian boulevards.

Once the Roman city of Mediolanum, though its boundary walls vanished long ago, besides historic sights, the area has a grid of shopping streets around Via Montenapoleone known as the Quadrilatero d’Oro or 'Golden Triangle'. Milan is home to some outrageously expensive boutiques, as well as haute-couture stores and the head offices of all the biggest brand names in international fashion. With so much to see and do, where do you begin? Well, here’s a suggested itinerary.

Start out at 9:30am for the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and marvel at this treasure trove, which includes Leonardo’s Codex Atlantico -- oversized tomes filled with Leonardo’s sketches, Titian’s Adoration of the Magi, and Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit, amongst others. Bequeathed to the city by art-loving Cardinal Frederico Borromeo, the collection also includes the original cartoon for Raphael’s famed School of Athens, a preparatory drawing for his famous fresco of Greek philosophers with the faces of Renaissance artists.

Next, work your way south to Via Torino and the gem of a church, Santa Maria presso San Satiro, with its 11th-century bell tower, Renaissance chapel, Baroque-style rear façade finished in 1871, and 15th-century interior decorations. Then walk north up Via Torino until you reach the Piazza del Duomo and take a left up towards Via Mecanti to see the raised porticoes of Palazzo della Ragione, a 13th-century broletto (town hall) where a small Xmas fiesta market starts in late November. Now cross the huge Piazza to enjoy the marvels of Italy’s second largest cathedral and explore its roof.

Then head over to the gorgeous liberty-style Zucca (Caffè Miani) for a spot of lunch. At the entrance of Italy’s grandest shopping arcade, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II, was where Verdi and Toscanini would stop by after La Scala shows. Be sure to try its cheese and meat platter, and nothing warms you right up more than a small mug of rich, thick, steamy hot chocolate. Ooh-la-la. For more on what to eat, be sure to read my journal on Lombardy’s culinary delights.

In the afternoon, nourished and filled with renewed energy, exit the arcade at Piazza della Scala, flanked by the famed opera house and Palazzo Marino. The former was built under the aegis of the Austrians and boasts a sumptuous interior, excellent acoustics, and a staggering list of premieres, including Verdi’s Egyptian melodrama Aida (1872), Puccini’s tale of enduring love between a Japanese geisha and American soldier, Madame Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (1926), another Asian tale by Puccini. The latter, Milan’s municipio (city hall), has two distinct façades: a 1553 mannerist one, on Piazza S Fedele, and an 1886-92 neo-classical one, facing La Scala theatre. Behind the city hall is the 1559 Jesuit temple San Fedele, a single nave construction which became the Lombard blueprint for churches built in the counter-Reformation era. After this, walk northeast past the surreal Casa degli Omenoni, Renaissance sculptor Leone Leoni’s palazzo, whose lower level façade is lined with eight giant telamones, which are columns in the form of a male figure.

Turn left next to visit the excellent Museo Poldi-Pezzoli, with its vast collection of arms and armour, displayed in a room designed by Pomodoro in 2000. Then continue north on Via Manzoni, admiring its palazzi and Armani boutique until you come to Milan’s premier shopping venue, Via Montenapoleone. This is where you will likely spend the rest of your day. And in the evening, take a rest break at Cova. Opened by the Faccioli family in 1871 near La Scala and later moved to its present location, it has remained in the family and continues to be the café of choice for the city’s elite. Its in-house pastries, chocolates, and sandwiches are some of the most exquisite in town, and they brew a mean cup of cappuccino to boot.