visiting Milan

Milan is not really a touristic city, is more a place where going shopping for the special brands all grouped in the famous "via Montenapoleone" where you can visit the stores of the most famous names of the world such as Valentino, Givency, Chanel, Trussardi and others and stop for a coffee or buy a special cake at Cova (one the oldest patisserie of Milan) or in some other coffee shop along the way.

Milano is also a city that has something else to show even if you have to look carefoully HEHE

For instance, the first thing you can do is visit the Dome, you can do in two ways, climbing up the thiusand stairs till the topo and have a look at the panorama of the city or take the lift (depends how much you want to spend).

Dome has started the construction in 1386 and has 135 pinnacles, 3500 statues (just outside), inside it offers 40000,00 placese, it has 52 colums and is divided into 5 sections.

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele is considered the "livingroom of Milan" and contains many other shops (such as Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci), elegant restaurants, cafeteria and coffee shops.
This gallery has been built in the XIX century, it has a mosaic pavement and an iron and glass round top.

During Christmas time this way becomes enchanting all decorated by lights or some times by a central enormous tree decorated by thousand precious swarowky cristal pendents.

Santa Maria delle Grazie is a red brick church builted between 1466 and 1490, it contains the most famous picture of Leonardo da Vinci, "the last supper" (1496) which is visited every year by thousand of tourists who have to reserve to get inside to see it :)

If you want to give a look at the Leonardo paint you have to reserve four or five months in advance.

The painture is now part of the UNESCO national treasures.

The Castello Sforzesco is the ancients home of the family Sforza, built between 1358 and 1368.

Today the castle contains museums and is home of many events changing every season of the year.

For the inhabitants like us Milano is not really enchanting, we prefer to go outside the city, the most curious thing is that in Milan the thing we have most is churches, you have to search and look well to find other, for example the Acquario Civico (read about our visit with Momichan) near the Castello Sforzesco, were Momichan and I go many times, it contains many fishes from lakes and sea, octopus, star fish, jelly fish and more (entrance free), another cute place in the Museum of Natural Science (read about the visit we have done with Momichan) where you can see some dynosaurs, precious stones and minerals and most of all many dioramas with real animal inside and thousands of enchanting colured insects from every corner of the world. Momichan loves both museums and when we have time and is a sunny day we go for a visit.