Maria Teresa had the towering gingko planted here in 1777, when she turned the former Jesuit orchard into an open-air lecture hall for budding botanists (the wunderkind of the Enlightenment). This fragrant, walled garden is still filled with medicinal plants and is a pleasant place for a stroll. 　　To reach...

　　Milan’s most eccentric museum of 20th-century Italian painting is crowded in a 1930s apartment that still has the appearance of the haute-bourgeois home it once was. It’s a heady art hit, with Boccioni’s dynamic brushstrokes propelling painting towards futurism; the nostalgically metaphysical Campigli and de Chirico; and the restless, expressionist...

　　This church dates from the 13th century, when its ossuary was used to bury plague victims from nearby San Barnaba hospital. It was rebuilt in rococo style in 1679, after it collapsed beneath the fallen bell tower of adjacent Santo Stefano. The walls of the new ossuary, with its frescoed...

　　Dominating Via Sant'Andrea is the baroque facade of the Palazzo Morando Attendolo Bolognini, home to the Bolognini family until 1945. The personal apartments of the countess exhibit her porcelain, sculpture and objets d'art, while other rooms exhibit the city's civic art collection. The paintings provide an insight into Milan during...

　　Situated at the northwestern edge of Parco Sempione is Napoleon's 25m-high triumphal arch. Designed by Luigi Cagnola in 1807, it echoes Paris' Arc de Triomphe and marks the start of Corso Sempione, the main road that connects Milan to Paris via the Simplon (Sempione) Pass. Ironically, thanks to Napoleon's fall...

　　At the age of 24 Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli had inherited not only his family fortune, but also his mother’s love of art. After extensive travels in which he took inspiration from European art trends, he transformed his apartments into a series of themed rooms based on the great art...

　　Italy’s first Triennale took place in 1923 in Monza. It aimed to promote Italian design and applied arts, and its success led to the construction of Giovanni Muzio’s Palazzo d’Arte in Milan in 1933. Since then, this exhibition space has championed design in all its forms, although the triennale formula...

　　Aiming to be a place of dialogue between people and world cultures, Milan's Museum of Culture, housed in the ex-Ansaldo factory, has an ambitious remit. The huge industrial complex was re-engineered by British architect David Chipperfield into a series of severe spaces in translucent glass and concrete. Recent shows have...

　　Situated behind Castello Sforzesco, Parco Sempione was once the preserve of hunting Sforza dukes. Then Napoleon came to town and set about landscaping. First the French carved out orchards; next they mooted the idea in 1891 of a vast public park. It was a resounding success, and today Milanese of...

　　Conceived by designer Miuccia Prada and architect Rem Koolhaas, this museum is as innovative and creative as the minds that gave it shape. Seven renovated buildings and three new structures have transformed a century-old gin distillery into 19,000 sq metres of exciting, multilevel exhibition space. The buildings, including the shimmering...

　　Overlooking Piazza del Duomo, with fabulous views of the cathedral, is Mussolini's Arengario, from where he would harangue huge crowds in his heyday. Now it houses Milan's museum of 20th-century art. Built around a futuristic spiral ramp (an ode to the Guggenheim), the heady collection includes the likes of Boccioni,...

　　Originally a Visconti fortress, this iconic red-brick castle was later home to the mighty Sforza dynasty, who ruled Renaissance Milan. The castle's defences were designed by the multitalented da Vinci; Napoleon later drained the moat and removed the drawbridges. Today, it houses seven specialised museums, which gather together intriguing fragments...

　　A stroll around the Quadrilatero d'Oro, the world's most famous shopping district, is a must even for those not sartorially inclined. The quaintly cobbled quadrangle of streets – loosely bound by Via Monte Napoleone, Via Sant'Andrea, Via Senato and Via Manzoni – have long been synonymous with elegance and money,...

　　Located upstairs from one of Italy’s most prestigious art schools, this gallery houses Milan’s collection of Old Masters, much of it ‘lifted’ from Venice by Napoleon. Rubens, Goya and Van Dyck all have a place, but you're here for the Italians: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and the Bellini brothers. Much of...

　　Behind striking Renaissance-revival black-and-white walls, Milan’s wealthy have kept their dynastic ambitions alive long after death with grand sculptural gestures since 1866. Nineteenth-century death-and-the-maiden eroticism gives way to some fabulous abstract forms from mid-century masters. Studio BBPR’s geometric steel-and-marble memorial to Milan’s WWII concentration-camp dead sits in the centre, stark...

　　A vision in pink Candoglia marble, Milan's extravagant Gothic cathedral, 600 years in the making, aptly reflects the city's creativity and ambition. Its pearly white facade, adorned with 135 spires and 3400 statues, rises like the filigree of a fairy-tale tiara, wowing the crowds with its extravagant detail. The interior...

　　Milan's most famous mural, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, is hidden away on a wall of the refectory adjoining the Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie. Depicting Christ and his disciples at the dramatic moment when Christ reveals he's aware of his betrayal, it's a masterful psychological study and...