Cultural site in Milan

A brick fortress at the top of the old centre holding several museums at once, among them Michelangelo's last and unfinished Pietà. The courtyards are free to walk through and Sempione park opens out behind it — the easiest place in central Milan to sit down outdoors. Half a day with the museums, twenty minutes if you are cutting through.

An open-air gallery of funerary sculpture from the 1860s onward, laid out like a small city and free to walk. Unexpected, uncrowded, and one of the more memorable hours in Milan for anyone who likes sculpture or a camera. Twenty minutes north of the centre by tram.

One of the few opera houses whose name means something to people who never go to the opera. The museum and a look into a box are open by day; a performance is a different proposition and wants planning months out. The plain exterior surprises everyone who arrives expecting a monument.

A glass-roofed arcade from the 1870s linking the cathedral to La Scala, and the ancestor of every shopping centre since. Free to walk through and expensive to sit down in. Two minutes in passing, longer if you want the mosaic floor and the bull that people spin a heel on for luck.