Stereotypes, stereotypes: we detest them but we can’t live without them, really. In the end, there is always a tiny grain of truth in those common knowledge bites that time and habit made more real than reality. And Milan, extraordinary capital of Italy’s economic world, of fashion and business has never been exempt from them; indeed, each of the things I have just mentioned are part of the city’s most popular features, those for which it is usually known around the country and the world. Just like Rome is the Colosseum, Pisa is the leaning tower and Turin is FIAT or the Mole Antonelliana, in people’s collective imagination Milan is business, fashion, high life and, well, little else. Beside the fog, of course. Let’s not forget the fog.  

Ask any Milanese, or any person who made of the city his or her home, and you’ll hear an entirely different story, because Milan is a place filled with history and art, home to fantastic museums (the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, the Museo di Storia Naturale), beautiful architecture (the Duomo, of course, but also San Babila, Sant’Ambrogio and the Castello Sforzesco) and plenty of little, characteristic corners many visitors tend to forget about, taken away as they are by the glitz of Via della Spiga and the Triangolo della Moda area.