Explore Milan’s Best-kept Secrets

Beyond the glamour of fashion week, Milan’s lesser-known charms are woven into the fabric of the city.

Maleye Faye, the young cashier whose family owns and runs Pasticceria Sissi in Milan’s Zona Risorgimento district, has strong opinions about the city’s worthwhile treasures. “Ninety per cent of the most beautiful things in Milan are hidden,” he tells me one chilly afternoon as I sip an even chillier prosecco at the counter.

I’m unconvinced. His sentiments are typical of a resident in any given global city: what in-the-know local doesn’t revel in suggesting that only they hold the keys to the good stuff? But I soon learn that he isn’t wrong. Though cosmopolitan, busy and fashion-forward in the popular imagination, the flesh-and-blood city of Milan has stern-looking palazzi and a swirling social scene that can feel impenetrable for the first or even fifth-time visitor. This isn’t Florence or Venice, where painterly beauty is everyday, or Naples or Rome, where you need only follow your ears to the rowdiest piazza to find new friends for the evening.

In Milan, the real rhythm and soul thrum beneath the surface. The gates of those same grey palazzi hide jungly courtyards and hush-hush pop-up events hosted by the likes of fashion tycoon Brunello Cucinelli and gallerist Rossana Orlandi. Countless Art Deco and Italian Rationalist homes once belonging to nobility have been converted into under-the-radar museums, such as the Villa Necchi Campiglio and the Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano. The city’s grand and historic hotels are often tight-lipped about the stories they contain but when you befriend the right bellhop, new worlds open up. This is the 90 per cent. And it exists beyond the immediate charms of Piazza del Duomo and Fashion Week.

Take Pasticceria Sissi itself. It’s rather unremarkable from the outside, particularly when compared to Marchesi or Cova, two café/bakeries famous for their elaborate and extra-dolce window displays on Via Monte Napoleone, the main shopping artery of the Quadrilatero fashion district. There, the city’s best-dressed turn out for their afternoon strolls, when fare bella figura – cutting a fine figure or in the simplest terms, “seeing and being seen” – is a bigger priority than bringing home purchases from designer boutiques.

Sissi, by contrast, is barely detectable from the street. Inside, its cotton-candy-coloured walls, dainty but decadent sweets and glamorous clientele secure its reputation among everyone from the cognoscenti to neighbourhood families. These days, it’s associated with the sciura (the word for signora in the local dialect and the favoured muse for a certain corner of social media). Picture the archetypal Prada-clad woman of a certain age; the doyenne who maintains Milan’s status as a fashion capital in those seasons when what’s on the runway isn’t quite up to her standards. Suffice to say, you’ll find much of the international style set converging on Sissi during Fashion Week, following in the wake of the sciura (it’s never the reverse).

Much of the city operates this way. When it comes to dining, young Milanese will always try the hottest fusion spots, such as Yoji Tokuyoshi’s Japanese-Italian Bentoteca or Scandinavian-Asian restaurant Spore – they may even end up frequenting them. But shabby-chic eateries like Trattoria Bolognese Da Mauro with its Bologna-style tortellini or street-food stalwarts such as Giannasi 1967 and its comforting roast chicken will outlast the latest talk of the town.

Milan is an outlier for many tradition-bound Italians, who see it as the domain of the entrepreneurs, the experimenters, the globally minded. But for visitors, it’s that same crowd’s commitment to old world niceties, afternoon espresso and sprezzatura (studied nonchalance) that ensure its appeal.

Some of the city’s most beguiling accommodations, museums, bars and restaurants are built on this blend of then and now. Over at Bar Basso, in the heart of the Città Studi neighbourhood, the necktie sporting waitstaff seem almost anachronistic, doling out goblets – yes, goblets – of Negroni Sbagliatos to 80-year-old polyglots and 20-something TikTokers in equal measure. Back downtown on the edge of the Quadrilatero, barely a five-minute walk from world-renowned opera house La Scala, there’s Gerry’s Bar, the buzzy after-dinner lounge in the sumptuously furnished Grand Hotel et de Milan, where the ghost of Marcello Mastroianni wouldn’t look out of place. Before retiring for the evening, I tiptoe to the hotel’s front desk and sheepishly ask if anyone has time to show me the Verdi Suite that I’ve heard about. Maestro Giuseppe Verdi lived here on and off for 27 years, composing Falstaff and Otello from a desk that still remains, facing out onto Via Manzoni.

A chipper woman obliges and on the way upstairs, I learn that iconic soprano Maria Callas was a regular guest here, too. My room, it turns out, is the opera-memorabilia-lined Caruso Suite, named for supreme tenor Enrico Caruso, and I start to get it... The Grand Hotel et de Milan, elegant but unassuming when viewed from the street, was where La Scala’s biggest stars retired to when in town, both to gear up and unwind. Today, the hotel’s dining duet of Don Carlos, the classic Milanese white-tableclothed restaurant, and Caruso Nuovo, the recently revamped bistro with southern Italian flourishes and contemporary freshness, pay tribute to that legacy – while embodying the city’s flair.

The next morning I take the 15-minute walk to the Etruscan museum of Fondazione Luigi Rovati. I could have braved the ever-efficient Metro’s M3 line with its chic commuters but wanted to make the detour through the Indro Montanelli Gardens, one of the many neighbourhood “pocket parks” that play second fiddle to the sprawling Parco Sempione, the green heart of the city bordered by the Castello Sforzesco (aka Sforza Castle) and the photogenic Arco della Pace (Arch of Peace).

It’s worth remembering that Milan is a modern city and perhaps not the obvious spot for a tribute to ancient civilisation. It’s a big-four fashion capital, host for a portion of the 2026 Winter Olympics, a fertile ground for sustainable architecture (see Stefano Boeri’s regenerative skyscraper, Bosco Verticale) and a trade hub so hot that the United States consulate has been undergoing major expansion for years. But compared to Rome or rural Tuscany, Milan is meagre on the archaeological heritage front. “Etruscans”, who lived between the 8th and the 3rd century BCE, and “Milan” seemingly fit together as well as Gucci suede pumps and pouring rain – or so you might think.

But the Fondazione Luigi Rovati’s gallery is not your typical archaeological museum. Its collection of Etruscan relics is housed in the former home of the Rizzoli family, Milanese publishing giants and tastemakers. The high-ceilinged, gilded rooms – repainted in magenta and mint-green, corridors lined with mirrors – offer a delicious backdrop to the bronze buckles, votive figures and remarkable statement jewellery of the phantom-like Etruscans. Some of these ancient objects can’t easily be distinguished from the modern pieces placed in dialogue with them. That mingling of the antique and avant-garde is Milan in a nutshell and it’s never been more pronounced than now. But, as Maleye Faye says, it takes seeking out.

SEE ALSO: A Fashion Buyer’s Guide to Shopping in Milan