On the western edge of Milan, a short drive from the centre, Acquatica Park is a summer water park that has been a favourite escape from the heat for residents of the city for more than thirty years. Eighteen attractions are spread across landscaped grounds, with slides, pools and shaded lawns laid out around two main areas geared respectively to young children and to thrill-seekers. The largest pool, the Aztec Lagoon, has a rocky waterfall feature and shallow areas suited to relaxed bathing, w.....

Founded in 379 AD by Saint Ambrose, the great bishop of Milan, the Basilica of Sant Ambrogio is one of the oldest churches in the city and one of the most important Romanesque buildings in northern Italy. The current structure dates largely from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, rebuilt on the lines of the early Christian basilica. The exterior is dominated by a broad atrium, an open colonnaded courtyard in front of the church that recalls the early Christian custom of separating the catechum.....

A slender steel lattice piercing the trees of the Parco Sempione in central Milan, the Torre Branca rises just over a hundred and eight metres above the park and offers one of the best views over the city. Designed by the great Italian architect Gio Ponti and built in only sixty-eight days, the tower was inaugurated in August 1933 for the fifth Milan Triennale. The tower height was carefully calibrated by the regime of the time to fall a few centimetres short of the gilded Madonnina on top of t.....

Built into the modern Casa Milan headquarters in the Portello district north-west of central Milan, the Mondo Milan museum is the official museum and trophy room of the AC Milan football club. Designed by the architect Fabio Novembre and opened in 2014, the building serves as both the corporate base of the club and a showcase of its history. The museum interactive route covers the more than one and a quarter centuries of the club existence, from its foundation by English expatriates in 1899 as .....

Begun in the mid fourteenth century by the Visconti lords of Milan and substantially rebuilt a century later by Francesco Sforza after he established the Sforza dynasty, the Castello Sforzesco is the great red-brick fortress on the northern edge of central Milan, one of the largest urban castles in Europe and a symbol of the city for more than six centuries. The current outline of the castle dates largely from the 1450s, when Francesco Sforza commissioned the architect Filarete to design a powe.....

Opened to the public on 1 April 2025 in the restored Liberty-style buildings of the former De Montel stables in the San Siro district of Milan, De Montel Terme Milano is the largest urban thermal park in Europe, covering sixteen thousand square metres with ten geothermal pools fed from a hot spring nearly four hundred metres below ground. The site has an unexpected back story. The original stables were built in 1921 to designs by the architect Vietti Violi for the engineer and textile industria.....

The Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci is the largest science and technology museum in Italy and one of the most important institutions of its kind in southern Europe. The museum was founded in 1953 to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Leonardo da Vinci and occupies the former sixteenth-century monastery of San Vittore al Corpo in the central Brera district of Milan. The monastery was built in the early sixteenth century as a religious foundatio.....

Formally the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza but known to almost everyone as San Siro after the district of Milan in which it stands, this great cylindrical stadium is the largest football ground in Italy and the home of both AC Milan and Inter Milan, an unusual sharing arrangement that has lasted since 1947. The stadium currently seats around seventy-five thousand spectators across three steeply pitched tiers. The original ground on the site was built in 1925 to a much more modest design with a capacit.....

A late fifteenth-century Dominican church and convent in central Milan, Santa Maria delle Grazie is best known as the home of Leonardo da Vinci Last Supper, painted on the wall of the convent refectory between 1495 and 1498. The combined site of church and refectory has been inscribed since 1980 on the UNESCO World Heritage list and is one of the most important Renaissance buildings in Lombardy. The church was begun in 1463 by the Dominicans to designs by the architect Guiniforte Solari, with a.....

A large urban park spreading behind the Castello Sforzesco on the north-western edge of central Milan, Parco Sempione is the most central of the major public parks of the city, covering thirty-nine hectares of lawns, mature trees and ornamental water features. The park was laid out between 1888 and 1894 on what had been the parade ground of the Castello, by the architect Emilio Alemagna in a romantic English landscape style. The park takes its name from the Strada del Sempione, the road built b.....