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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).

St Ambrose himself, Milan’s 4th-century bishop, inaugurated this church, which was overhauled in the 11th and 12th centuries. Highlights include a quiet entry atrium, Dark-Age mosaics glittering in the apse, and medieval features.

Dating from the 4th century, this church is still pretty much Roman in its rotund design, although it was rebuilt several times in the Middle Ages. Inside the church are some of the oldest and best-preserved examples of post-Roman art in Northern Italy: 1,600-year-old Paleochristian mosaics.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper fresco in the adjacent refectory (see Leonardo’s Last Supper), but only a few bother with the lovely church itself. Make the effort, though, if you can: its architecture shows the stylistic changeover, from austere Gothic to Classical Renaissance, that marked the end of the 15th century. The art here is among Milan’s best in sculpture, fresco and the rare sgraffito (etched designs) recently restored in the tribune.

Though the main entrance is on Via Torino, walk around and up Via Speronari to see an 11th-century bell tower and the pretty exterior of a tiny Renaissance chapel. Turn right again on Via Falcone for the Renaissance-meets-Baroque rear façade finished in 1871. Here a secondary entrance is usually open, so you can nip inside to admire the 15th-century decorations.

Ignore the insipid 19th-century façade, for the church behind it is ancient, founded in the 4th century. Beyond the main church and behind the altar is the cappella Portinari. It was designed locally, but so superbly did it embody early Renaissance Florentine ideals that it was for a long time attributed to Brunelleschi or Michelozzo. The chapel’s masterpieces are the 1486 frescoes by Vicenzo Foppa.

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.

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.

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.

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.