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Built to house a vial of Christ’s blood, this basilica was created by some of Italy’s finest architectural talents. Leon Battista Alberti, the great Renaissance theorist, designed it in 1470, Giulio Romano, a founder of Mannerism, enlarged it in 1530, and Baroque master Juvarra added the dome in 1732. Frescoes cover every inch of the barrel-vaulted interior.

The Borromeo family’s 1670 palazzo on the lushly landscaped Isola Bella is an incomparable glimpse into the lifestyle of the wealthiest of Lombard families (see Isola Bella: Borromeo Palace).

Bartolomeo Colleoni was a condottiere , a redoubtable mercenary general who, as a reward for his services, received Bergamo as his own fiefdom. Never much of a one for understatement, Colleoni demolished a church sacristy to make his own tomb, hiring the sculptor Amadeo to decorate it with a complex allegory of Biblical and Classical reliefs plus a horse-mounted effigy of himself for the sepulchre inside.

Renaissance sculptor Leone Leoni, whose works grace Milan’s Duomo and Madrid’s El Escorial, built this palazzo in 1565, lining the lower level of the façade with eight giant telamones – columns in the form of a male figure.

In 1456 Francesco Sforza instituted one of his greatest public works, a massive hospital with separate wings for women and men, each based around four courtyards. The vast central Cortile Maggiore was added in the 17th century, along with the Annunciazione church with its Guercino altarpiece. The Neo-Classical men’s wing was eventually completed in 1904; but the entire hospital moved elsewhere in 1939, to be replaced by the University of Milan in 1958.

Gian Galeazzo Visconti commissioned the construction of this vast, gorgeous Charterhouse in 1396 as a lavishly decorated home for a group of Carthusian monks, but more importantly to ensure his ruling clan would have a family burial chapel of gargantuan proportions and extravagant artistic merit.

Como’s statue-studded cathedral is devoted to local patron and protector Sant’Abbondio, whose life is played out in the giant gilt altarpiece of 1509–14. Other Renaissance tapestries and paintings – including one by Leonardo’s protégé Bernardino Luini – grace the interior.

Milan’s cathedral is the third-largest church in the world and a testament to Milan-ese persistence. Despite construction that lasted more than 400 years (1386–1813), it managed to remain uncompromisingly faithful to the original Gothic design, a beautiful hulk of stone turrets, statues and flying buttresses (see Milan’s Duomo).

High-class Italian elegance came to terms with the Industrial Age in such marvels of engineering as this four-storey shopping arcade roofed with a steel-and-glass canopy. It was built in 1864–8 by Giuseppe Mengoni, who fell to his death from its scaffolding just days before the King arrived to open the galleria and lend it his name.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II