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City guide · Italy
Milan is Italy's economic capital, its metropolitan area producing about a fifth of national GDP, and it neither looks nor behaves like the Italian cities most visitors have in mind. The historic core is compact and radial, rings of street wrapped around the Duomo, and it can be walked; the rest of the city is at work. Around 1.36 million people live inside the boundary and some 6.55 million in the metropolitan area, the largest in Italy. What a short visit uses is the cathedral, the Navigli in the evening, and the trains out to the lakes.
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Milan's cathedral was begun in 1386, on ground already occupied by the basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Tecla, whose remains still lie under the square.
Castello Sforzesco is a brick fortress in the middle of Milan that has been a ducal palace, a foreign garrison and, for the last century, the city's own museum complex.
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a covered street, not a building a visitor enters and leaves.
The Cimitero Monumentale is Milan's municipal cemetery north of the centre, and the city has treated it as a public monument since the day it opened.
Porta Nuova is a business district on the northern rim of central Milan, and the name holds two places at once.
Set your days, your pace and the hours you actually want to be out. The planner works around closing days and travel time, and leaves room to eat.
