Milan in 3 Days — Leonardo's Wall and the Design City

Milan keeps its masterpieces inside buildings that are still doing a job: a monastery refectory you get fifteen minutes with, a 1930s civic palace that now holds the century of Italian art built after it, a duke's castle whose last room holds Michelangelo's unfinished final sculpture, a 1935 heiress's house with the first private heated pool in the city, and a gin distillery turned art campus. Three days follow that line. Day one is Piazza Duomo top to bottom and then a walk north to the towers that went up in the 2010s; day two is Leonardo's wall in the morning and the machines and objects Milan made afterwards; day three runs from a private house through a distillery full of art down to the canals at aperitivo hour. One rule decides everything: Milan closes on Monday. The Last Supper, the Castello museums, the Triennale, the science museum and Villa Necchi all shut, and the Museo del Novecento does not open until 14:30, so a Monday anywhere in these three days breaks it. Day three also cannot be a Tuesday, when Fondazione Prada closes, and day one is worth keeping off a Wednesday, when the Duomo Museum you have paid for in the pass is shut. Thursday to Saturday clears all of it at once. Book the Last Supper the moment your dates appear: it costs 15 euros, tickets go on sale in three-month blocks rather than on a rolling calendar, a further tranche for the following week is released every Wednesday at noon Milan time, and the visit itself is exactly fifteen minutes for forty people. Roughly 300 euros a head covers every ticket, three days of unlimited public transport and every listed meal; beds and flights are on top. Come in spring or autumn, and avoid the week of the Salone del Mobile in April unless that is why you are coming, when hotel rates treble and rooms go months ahead.