The 10 best day trips from Milan
Only an hour's drive north of the city lies Lake Como, with its bijou villages and magnificent lakefront gardens that feel a world away from the hubbub of the city. Several of the other famed lakes are within easy reach too, offering plenty of opportunities for water sports and refreshing swims come summer, while scenic vineyard landscapes dotted with award-winning restaurants are bound to delight avid oenophiles and foodies alike.
Milan is very well connected to major towns and cities thanks to Italy's high-speed railway network, making it all too easy to zip away for the day to explore what lies beyond Italy's capital of fashion and design.
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History
Bergamo Alta
Set on a hillside encircled by Venetian walls, the Città Alta (Upper Town) is Bergamo's historical core, connected to the Città Bassa (Lower Town) by a historic funicular railway. Ruled by the Venetians for over 350 years, Bergamo Alta is one of Italy's most delightful urban centres, its narrow pedestrianised streets lined with palazzi in a harmonious melange of architectural styles ranging from medieval to Renaissance. At its heart lies Piazza Vecchia, which Le Corbusier named 'the most beautiful square in Europe'.
How to get there: Trains run from Milano Centrale to Bergamo in 48 minutes.
Pavia
Milan's Naviglio Pavese connects Milan to Pavia – you can cycle some 20 miles or so along the canal, passing fields and fruit orchards before reaching the striking Certosa di Pavia. Commissioned in the late 14th century by the Duke of Milan Gian Galeazzo Visconti as the family mausoleum, the Carthusian monastery complex was built to resemble Milan's Duomo, taking a hundred years to build. It's well worth visiting before you take a leisurely stroll around the lively university town centre.
How to get there: Trains run to Pavia from Milano Centrale to Pavia in 29 minutes.
Turin
Sitting at the foot of the Alps, Turin has an elegant historical core that can easily be explored on foot, its tree-shaded avenues lined with Baroque palazzi opening onto magnificent piazzas. The city was the first capital of unified Italy and the seat of the House of Savoy, and there's no shortage of magnificent Royal Residences where you can catch a glimpse of its past. For fabulous city views, visit the excellent Museo Nazionale del Cinema and catch the lift to the top of the Mole Antonelliana, the undisputed symbol of Turin.
How to get there: High-speed trains connect Milan to Turin in 1 hour.
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Culture
Borghetto sul Mincio
Sitting on the banks of the River Mincio, this charming medieval hamlet is beautifully preserved, with a bell tower and water mills where wheat and grains were once milled. Don't miss without trying the area's famous handmade tortellini before spending the rest of the day at Parco Giardino Sigurtà, a gorgeous 150-acre park with paved pathways meandering through wooded slopes, manicured parterres and expansive green lawns; there's an animal farm and maze, too.
How to get there: Drive approximately two hours from Milan.
Franciacorta
Lying south of Lake Iseo, the wine-producing region of Franciacorta is one of Italy's best-kept secrets, with some excellent sparkling wines produced here. The 50-mile Strada del Vino wine route meanders through pretty vineyard landscapes, passing award-winning restaurants and wine producers where you can stop off and enjoy vineyard tours and tastings. You could easily spend the day hopping from one vineyard to the next, or, if you're pressed for time, you can combine this trip with a visit to Lake Iseo.
Lake Como
The closest of the Italian Lakes to Milan, Lake Como offers no shortage of quaint villages with picture-perfect lake vistas, Riva Boats zipping across deep blue waters. You can easily reach the provincial capital of Como by train before hopping on one of the regular boat services connecting villages around the lake. Your safest bet for a day trip, though, is to catch a direct train from Milan to pretty little Varenna, which sits about halfway up the lake, with the majority of sights a short boat ride away – don't miss the striking Villa del Balbianello and the gardens of Villa Carlotta.
How to get there: Trains run from Milano Centrale to Como S. Giovanni in 37 minutes; trains from Milano Centrale to Varenna-Esino take 1 hour and 24 minutes.
Orta San Giulio
The exquisite medieval core of Orta San Giulio – Lake Orta's main town – is an utter delight, its narrow, cobbled streets lined with honey hued palazzos. From the lakefront square of Piazza Motta, boats travel to the itsy-bitsy Isola San Giulio, home to a beautiful frescoed Basilica. You can walk around the island in about twenty minutes or so, following the island's (only) cobbled lane, pausing here and there to take in dreamy lake views.
How to get there: Drive 1 hour and 20 minutes from Milan.
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Nature
Mantua
Hugged by the River Mincio and its lakes, Mantua was ruled by the House of Gonzaga for nearly 400 years. The family left an indelible mark on the city, calling in Renaissance greats such as Andrea Mantegna and Leon Battista Alberti to design churches and embellish palazzi. The surrounding area offers excellent cycling opportunities, with plenty of cruises also serving the lakes. Most boats allow you to take your bike on board, so you can easily combine a stroll around the historical centre with scenic cycling and cruising.
How to get there: Trains connect Milan to Mantua in 2 hours.
Lake Iseo
Hemmed in by wooden slopes, pretty Lake Iseo is home to Europe's largest lake island. You can walk or cycle the six-mile road that traces the island, refuelling with a bite to eat at one of the fishing villages that dot the shore. Back on the mainland, there are plenty of lidos and secluded beaches for a refreshing swim, with grassy areas where little one can run around as you lie back and catch a few rays.
How to get there: Drive 1 hour and 15 minutes from Milan.
Lake Maggiore & Lake Mergozzo
Lake Maggiore is best known for its islands of Isola Bella and Isola Madre, with their lakefront villas and stunning gardens where peacocks strut about, although it's also a great spot to try your hand at watersports, including wakesurfing, wakeboarding, water skiing and windsurfing. Only a ten-minute drive from Lake Maggiore, yet well away from the tourist crowds, lies the itsy-bitsy Lake Mergozzo, one of Italy's cleanest alpine lakes – perfect for a refreshing swim.
How to get there: Drive 1 hour and 30 minutes from Milan.
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How we choose
Every attraction and activity in this curated list has been tried and tested by our destination expert, to provide you with their insider perspective. We cover a range of budgets and styles, from world-class museums to family-friendly theme parks – to best suit every type of traveller. We update this list regularly to keep up with the latest openings and provide up to date recommendations.
About our expert
Kiki Deere
I was raised bilingually in northern Italy, and you can often find me strolling the cobbled streets of Brera while sussing out the latest spots in the city for a top-notch aperitivo.
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Cooking a pizza for longer than 90 seconds is sacrilegious. And the final product must be consumed within 10 minutes after emerging from the oven. On the blistering-hot final day of the AVPN's rigorous monthly training course, the international students will put their newfound pizza knowledge to the test. Attendees have studied dough-leavening techniques and hydration, the ins and outs of yeast, the nuances of picking fresh toppings and ideal salt-to-water ratios. They've practiced the intricacies of placing pizza into ovens – a simple-seeming but deceptively tricky step – all with the goal of baking a consistently perfect pie. "I was quite nervous, especially as people started coming back from their exams," says Gemma Eldridge, a Canadian pizza-maker. "But you're really only there for three minutes. You don't really have time to be nervous." From 10:00 to 18:00 during the nine-day course, Eldridge and her fellow pizzaioli baked as many as 40 practice pies each day. Today, students pick at their rehearsal Margheritas as they await the return of the other trainees from their exams, under the scrutiny of local pizza celebrities Gino Sorbillo and Paolo Surace. The chefs are being judged on an undisputed classic: the Margherita. While the pizzaioli refine their technical know-how through this intensive programme, the course is only their first step towards pizza mastery. The real work begins with maintaining these standards in pizzerias back home – an ongoing test that will continue throughout the rest of their careers, should they one day work in accredited Neapolitan pizza restaurants. While pizza-chef training is available to anyone, the bar is higher for restaurants to get accredited. Pizzerias must first employ an AVPN-trained pizzaiolo. They then have to fill out reams of forms in which they swear to "accept, respect and promote the tradition of the Neapolitan pizza". They must photograph their kitchen, equipment and ingredients, as well as take videos of their head pizza chef preparing dough and making and cooking a pizza. This is all sent off to the AVPN headquarters in Naples with no guarantee of approval. To date, roughly 1,000 pizzerias from Japan to Siberia and Ecuador to the UK have signed up to be part of this elite pizza club and, once accredited, can display their AVPN certificate bearing a striped figure wielding a baking peel, all together forming a global network of pizzerias where travellers know they can get the real deal. Still, a restaurant's scrutiny isn't over once it's accredited, as the AVPN intermittently dispatches secret pizza agents on espionage missions to clandestinely spy on the restaurants. Any pizzeria found non-compliant with the group's standards by these quality-control spies risks de-listing. According to one such agent, who cannot be named: "The most serious error I found was a pizza that was crispy and with dough that was definitely not approved." The Association verified the problem and then promptly removed this restaurant from its list of pizzerias. In Japan, a pizzeria that was kicked out of the organisation – but continued to display its certificate – learned of the consequences the hard way. "We went to Osaka and removed it," laughs Di Porzio, recalling the lawyer accompanying the pizza enforcers. This mission to define authentic pizza has a curious side effect, says Karima Mover-Nocchi, a food historian at the University of Siena, who suggests the whole process is as much about myth-making as it is maintaining traditional like this:• A chef's guide to the best pizza in Naples• How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master• Italy's beloved 'fried pizza' By codifying "authentic" pizza, she says the AVPN creates an "inner circle" of true-pizza certificate holders. In short: all the exclusivity gets people salivating over pizza more. "The AVPN aren't just preserving a tradition, they're producing it," she says. "[The AVPN is elevating pizza] into a transcendental experience. They're safeguarding the dish, but also creating a mystique – and you're made to feel like you're part of something that's enduring." Still, given the high drama of these top-secret cloak-and-dagger pizza investigations, it's ironic that such fussy standards to maintain "traditional" Neapolitan pies haven't always existed. According to Di Porzio, centuries ago, Naples' artisanal pizza-makers each had differing techniques, usually passed down from father to son. But in the late 20th Century, faced with a groundswell of shoddy fast-food simulacra that offered fake-Neapolitan pizza, AVPN founder Antonio Pace – who is from a long lineage of pizzaioli – gathered 16 other pizza-making families to standardise what makes an "authentic" pie. There were bumps along the way for the "17 families", as they are known. A major row erupted over the finer details of dough fermentation, but the initial guidelines were published in 1984 and the AVPN was formed. In 1998, the organisation teamed up with the nearby Università Parthenope di Napoli to study pizza science, cutting-edge baking technology and the broader impact of the food, co-creating the Socio-Economic Observatory of Neapolitan Pizza. A yearly conference of top pizza-makers debate whether new findings, such as improvements to flour manufacturing, necessitate a rejigging of the regulations. But for all this precision and protectiveness over pizza napoletana, Antonio Puzzi, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Pizza e Pasta Italiana, notes that Italy has dozens of different types of pizzas. There's Neapolitan pizza fritta(deep-fried calzone), but also Roman pizza, which is crispier and crunchier than the Neapolitan style and rolled with a pin rather than hand-stretched. Then there's pizza nel ruoto (pizza baked in a pan), cooked in a small baking tin; the hot and crispy deep-fried pizzonta from Abruzzo; and a long list of variations on focaccias and flatbreads. "There are a lot of recognised kinds of pizza in many cities and many states," says Puzzi. "But the only official representation is for Neapolitan pizza." Even with Italy's many pizza varieties, certain faux pas – such as ordering a chicken pizza overseas – remain just as likely to invoke the wrath of Italian purists. Case in point: after trying in vain to open 880 shops in Italy, US pizza brand Domino's famously filed for bankruptcy in the bel paese in 2022 – and never dared to open a branch in Naples. Yet, some argue that Italian tastes arechanging, and despite the AVPN's seeming rigidity, they now seem to be more amenable to modifying their exacting standards than they were in the past. "If we can improve something, we'll change it, so we are very open," says Di Porzio. In 2024, Sorbillo, one of the AVPN's examiners and accredited restaurateurs, controversially debuted a Neapolitan pizza with Hawaiian-style toppings. While critics such as Puzzi describe the pizza as a "provocation" – and employees of the eponymous Naples restaurant Gino e Toto Sorbillo all but refused to serve it to me – Sorbillo believes there's room for both modernity and tradition. "Pizza does not stop at a certain point – it's always developing, changing, cooperating with the Association, there is always something to learn," he says. "The pizza of today is not the same as 40 years ago." Yet times do change, acknowledges Di Porzio, who says the AVPN faced a "lot of criticism" for accepting in 2013 that Neapolitan pizza could be cooked in electric ovens as well as the traditional wooden receptacles. The decision rankled the most hardcore traditionalists, says Di Porzio. Still, even as trends and styles shift and previously taboo toppings become de rigueur, Di Porzio and the AVPN believe it's important to maintain traditional cooking methods too. "I always say, pizza napoletana is not necessarily the best, but the pizza that has its strongest roots in the culture," says Di Porzio. "So it's a skill that we need to teach and preserve." -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
