DK Travel : Milan and the Lakes : History & Culture

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Parco Sempione

Milan’s only real park started life as the 15th-century ducal gardens, though its layout, laced with pathways, dates from the late 19th century. A fine little free aquarium is housed in a 1906 Liberty-style structure. There are also fountains (one by Giorgio de Chirico), exhibition halls, a sports arena and the triumphal Arco della Pace.
Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

Art-loving Cardinal Frederico Borromeo gave the city one of its greatest treasures when he bequeathed his private collection of works by Leonardo, Titian, Caravaggio and others, including the original cartoon for Raphael’s famed School of Athens .
Pinacoteca di Brera

In Northern Italy, Milan’s painting gallery is second only to Venice’s Accademia (though for sheer variety the Brera wins). Since Napoleon inaugurated the collection, it has been housed in the Jesuit’s Palazzo di Brera. It’s one of the regions’ main Top 10, and for more on the collection – which includes works by Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Bellini, Mantegna and Caravaggio.
Renaissance

Classical architecture and elegant painting, with delicate colours and new techniques such as perspective (15th–16th centuries).
Romanesque

A simple style of architecture in the 11th and 12th centuries defined by rounded arches and crude, expressive carvings.
Romantic

A 19th-century return to the Gothic age and over-wrought décor.
Rotonda di Via Besana

This Greek-cross church, dating from 1713, is now used for exhibitions. It is surrounded by a small green park bounded by a lovely rosette-shaped ring of a cloister. Here, in summer, films are shown al fresco.

Rotonda di Via Besana
San Fedele

The single nave construction of this 1559 Jesuit temple would become a blueprint for Lombard churches built in the Counter-Reformation. The Mannerist interior preserves some fine paintings, including Il Cerano’s Vision of St Ignatius , Bernardino Campi’s Four Saints and Transfiguration , and San Peterzano’s Pietà . The sacristy is lined by 17th-century cabinets by the Jesuit Daniele Ferrari, who also carved the pulpit.
San Lorenzo Maggiore

A free-standing row of 16 Corinthian columns – once part of a 2nd-century temple – sets San Lorenzo’s frontal piazza off from the road. The vast interior of the church is magnificent and sombre. It was built on a circular plan, with a ring-shaped ambulatory and matroneum, or raised women’s gallery, which often marked such early churches. The Chapel of S. Aquilino, to your right as you enter the building, preserves 4th-century mosaics, a 3rd-century sarcophagus and a Roman-era portal.
San Marco

Of the original church, finished in 1254 and dedicated to Venice’s patron St Mark as a tip of the hat for Venice’s help in defeating Barbarossa, all that remains is the main stone doorway, three saints in façade niches and the top of the right bell tower. The rest was overhauled in the 19th century, with care to retain some 16th-century frescoes. In the right tran-sept, there are earlier frescoes, dating to the 13th century, which were rediscovered only in the 1950s.