These Are the Buildings You Need to See in Milan

New York Times

09-04-2025

Milan is among Italy's largest and most influential cities: Founded in 590 B.C., it eventually became the capital of the Lombardy region. Yet for centuries, it was somewhat overlooked as a cultural hub; while Rome, Florence and Venice were widely viewed as Italy's seats of intellectual and artistic production, Milan was seen mainly as a gray, unromantic city of industry and finance. However, during the so-called Italian economic miracle, the boom that followed World War II, Milan emerged as a design center. Large companies like Pirelli, Olivetti and Fiat — manufacturers of tires, office equipment and automobiles, respectively — began to provide patronage to designers such as Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass, resulting in enduring examples of Italian design such as the former's 1958 Pirelli Tower skyscraper and the latter's 1969 Valentine typewriter. Milan's rise to a fashion capital in the 1980s added to its prestige, and many of the architecturally significant buildings constructed since then were created for and financed by its leading brands in manufacturing, publishing and, especially, fashion. Below are 10 sights, listed in the order in which they were built, that showcase the diversity of Milan's centuries of architecture.
1. Duomo of Milan
Construction on the Duomo of Milan, the city's cathedral, began in the 14th century, but the building wasn't officially completed until 1965. The project was led by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the first Duke of Milan, who imagined a church made from the unique pinkish white marble of the Candoglia quarry, north of the city, and brought on the French architect-engineers Nicolas de Bonaventure and Jean Mignot to realize his vision according to the latest Gothic fashions. They erected a tall, light-filled nave supported by flying buttresses. For reasons including shifts in funding and political leadership, work on the cathedral continued in fits and starts over the course of centuries — although there was notable progress in the early 1800s, when Napoleon, who was crowned king of Italy at the Duomo, ordered that the city finish the building's facade.
2. Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
This grand four-story shopping arcade was designed by the architect Giuseppe Mengoni in the neo-Renaissance style, with imposing arched entrances, ornately carved pilasters and a large glass dome at its center. Finished in 1877, three decades before Paris's flagship Galeries Lafayette department store, to which it's sometimes compared, it's widely considered the world's oldest shopping center and has hosted some of Milan's most storied brands — including Prada, which has sold luggage and leather goods in the arcade since 1913.
3. Villa Necchi Campiglio
The Quadrilatero del Silenzio in central Milan is one of the city's most exclusive neighborhoods, filled with grand homes in the stile Liberty, Italy's version of Art Nouveau. At the center is the Villa Necchi Campiglio, built between 1932 and 1935 for the prominent industrialist family after which it's named. The architect, Piero Portaluppi, was known for combining geometric Bauhaus forms with sumptuous materials — rare marbles, such as jade-green Verde Prato, were a favorite — and the latest technologies. At the two-story Villa Necchi Campiglio, built of stone with a marble trim, he incorporated intercoms, an elevator and a heated pool as well as walnut and rosewood floors and silk-covered walls. Famously the backdrop for Luca Guadagnino's film 'I Am Love' (2009), the house is also the setting for T Magazine's annual party during the Salone del Mobile design fair.
4. Villa Borsani
Milan didn't have a design school until the 1980s; before then, the architects of a home would often also design the furniture, decorative objects and even flatware. The Villa Borsani, located in the Varedo municipality north of Milan, is a prime example of this approach. The architect Osvaldo Borsani completed the house for his family in 1945 in the prevailing Rationalist style, which has much in common with Bauhaus design: He emphasized geometric shapes and functional touches, like concrete loggias suited to the sunny climate. Alongside bent plywood and industrial rubber pieces from Tecno, the experimental furniture company co-founded by Borsani and his brother, the residence contains finishes that were novel at the time, including glass railings for the foyer staircase; abstract mosaics in the bathroom; and a sculptural ceramic fireplace by the artist Lucio Fontana, a close family friend.
5. Castello Sforzesco
Named after the Sforza family, who ruled Milan during the 15th and 16th centuries, the Castello Sforzesco is one of the largest fortified buildings in Europe. Initially constructed from brick in the mid-14th century and protected by battlements and a central watchtower, the castle was the residence for Milan's ruling families until Italy's unification in the 1800s. In 1948, after the castle — which was being used as a civic library and museum — had been heavily damaged by Allied bombing during World War II, the Milanese government hired the prominent architecture firm BBPR to revitalize the site. In addition to incorporating distinctive modern entrances and new staircases throughout, the firm designed oversize exhibition cases made of steel, glass and wood to help mediate between the large scale of the castle's halls and the variety of historical objects in the collection, including life-size wooden statues and early 20th-century decorative bowls and vases.
6. Torre Velasca
When skyscrapers began to crop up in Milan after World War II, as part of Italy's wider push to update its cities, many locals were resistant to the idea of the modern towers interrupting the landscape of traditional low-rise buildings. The Torre Velasca, located in Milan's city center, offered a compromise. Built in 1958 by BBPR, the 26-floor skyscraper is reminiscent of a medieval watchtower, with dark stone cladding, deep-set windows and a mushroom-like top supported by visible struts. In front is an open plaza — another riff on a medieval tradition that provides precious outdoor space in Milan's increasingly dense urban center. Still primarily an office building, the Torre Velasca now houses short- and medium-term rental apartments and restaurants.
7. Church of Santa Maria Annunciata
During his nearly 60-year career, the polymathic architect and designer Gio Ponti developed several signature styles, including his versions of neo-Classicism and Rationalism, but one constant was his use of diamonds as a motif. The faceted shape informed everything from the silhouette of his cutlery to the form of his 1958 skyscraper the Pirelli Tower, for years Milan's tallest tower. It also appears throughout the Church of Santa Maria Annunciata, which Ponti built between 1964 and 1969 as a place of solace for visitors and patients of the adjacent San Carlo Borromeo Hospital, after which the church was originally named. Here, not just the footprint but the doorways, windows and altar are fashioned in diamondlike shapes. Even the thousands of tiles that cover the facade are faceted like cut stones. Though the church is one of Ponti's lesser-known buildings in Milan, it's one of the most striking examples of his exuberant modernist architecture.
8. Da Giacomo
With its green-painted, delicate boiserie, handmade lace curtains and antique wooden cafe chairs, the restaurant Da Giacomo, at the edge of Milan's historic center, looks as if it's been operating since the height of the stile Liberty, at the end of the 19th century. In fact, it's been open in this location only since 1989; its interiors are a sleight of hand dreamed up by the interior designer Renzo Mongiardino, who created flamboyant theater and film sets as well as homes for Milan's elite before his death in 1998. Today, the restaurant serves simple, mostly fish dishes using the highest-quality ingredients, in a space filled with antiques. Because most of Mongiardino's creations were either ephemeral stage designs or private apartments — he designed homes for several of Truman Capote's Swans, including Marella Agnelli and Lee Radziwill — Da Giacomo offers a rare chance to see his work in person.
9. Bosco Verticale
Built by the architect Stefano Boeri in 2014, in the then newly developed Porta Nuova district north of Milan's center, the experimental Bosco Verticale was envisioned as a new model for sustainable design. Conceived by Boeri as an alternative to traditional glass or stone skyscrapers, the innovative complex of 111 apartments comprises two towers (which have 19 and 27 floors, respectively) with steel-reinforced concrete balconies that display over 90 species of plants, including over 700 trees. Inspired by various historical sites, such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Casa nel Bosco — a midcentury house surrounded by a dense forest in Varese that was designed by Boeri's mother, the celebrated architect Cini Boeri — the Bosco Verticale contains so much flora that the building has its own microclimate, which cools the apartments during Milan's hot and humid summers.
10. Fondazione Prada
In 2010, about three decades after taking over and transforming her family's leather accessories business, the fashion designer Miuccia Prada decided to open a contemporary art center in Milan that would house her sprawling art collection. She chose an abandoned former gin distillery in the Largo Isarco neighborhood at the edge of the city as a site and brought on the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his avant-garde firm OMA to renovate and expand it. The resulting complex of 10 buildings, which provides a venue for both temporary and permanent exhibitions, juxtaposes industrial materials with surprising details. For example, Koolhaas covered the exterior and interior surfaces of the Podium building, one of the new structures, in a flame-resistant metallic foam that's made by injecting air into molten aluminum. Nearby is the Haunted House — named by Koolhaas when he first saw the then-neglected building — which he coated entirely in 20-karat gold leaf. With its idiosyncratic use of materials and innovative exhibition spaces, the Fondazione Prada has become a model for displaying art in the 21st century.