Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

The shopping quarter to the northeast of Piazza del Duomo - the few hundred square yards bordered by Via Monte Napoleone, Via Sant’Andrea, Via Spiga and Via Borgospesso, the so-called Quadrilatero d’Oro - is home to the shops of all the big designer names, along with design studios and contemporary art galleries. The area is well worth a stroll, if only to notice the better-heeled Milanese searching out the perfect objet d’art for their elegant pads. Indeed, to leave Milan without looking in the windows of its fashionable boutiques would be to miss out on a crucial aspect of the city. Just to the north of the shopping quarter, the Museo del Risorgimento at Via Borgonuovo 23 (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm & 2-6pm; free) charts the course of Italian Unification through a well-presented combination of paintings, proclamations, cuttings and photographs - though it helps to have some knowledge of the Italian Unification to appreciate it.

Along Via Fatebenefratelli from here, the heavily trafficked Piazza Cavour marks the corner of the city’s oldest public park, the Giardini Pubblici , designed by Piermarini shortly after completing La Scala. Relandscaped in the nineteenth century to give it a more rustic look, its shady avenues and small lake are saint for recuperating from Milan’s twin doses of culture and carbon monoxide fumes. On the left side of the park, the basement of the Palazzo Dugnani houses Milan’s Museo del Cinema (Tues-Fri 3-6.30pm; L5000/¬2.58), comprising an unlabelled collection of cameras, film-cutting apparatus and other equipment from the primeval days of cinema. The curator will do his best to persuade you to buy a catalogue, but the free leaflets are perfectly adequate.

Across the road from the park in the Villa Reale, the Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna , Via Palestro 16 (daily 9.30am-5.30pm; free), is one of Milan’s most palatable galleries, housed in Napoleon’s former in-town residence, which now doubles as the civic registry office. The main building holds nineteenth-century Italian art and sculpture - including striking political works by the painter Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, canvases by the self-styled romantic scapigliati (wild-haired) movement of the late nineteenth century, impressive sculptures by Marino Marini, and a less arcane selection of paintings by Corot, Millet and various French Impressionists. Also worth a look are the works of the Futurists - Boccioni, Balla and Morandi. In the grounds, the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (Tues-Sun 9.30am-5.30pm; www.pac-milano.org ; L10,000/¬5.17) is a venue for temporary and often prestigious exhibitions of national and international contemporary art. Overlooking the gardens, in a light airy annexe, the small Collezione Vismara has Picasso’s Battle of the Centaurs - a spontaneously simple charcoal complete with finger smudges - and minor but appealing works by Matisse, Dufy and their Italian contemporaries.

Just to the northeast of the park is Spazio Oberdan , Viale Vittorio Veneto 2 (Tues & Thurs 10am-10pm, Wed & Fri-Sun 10am-7.30pm; tel 02.7740.6300, www.provincia.milano.it ), one of the city’s most important venues for cultural events and very good temporary exhibitions on art, photography and sculpture.

On the easterly side of the Giardini Pubblici, the Civico Museo di Storia Naturale , Corso Venezia 55 (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat & Sun 9.30am-6.30pm; free), completes the round of museums, with a evenhandedly predictable natural history collection. It’s reckoned to be Italy’s best, but really the stuffed animals and dinosaur-bits are best reserved for one of Milan’s rainy afternoons: even then, parts of it are closed, as it’s currently undergoing what may establish to be a lengthy restoration.

Tags: art galleries, contemporary art, designer names, fashionable boutiques, milan, monte napoleone, objet d art, sant andrea, shopping, spiga, sun 9am