The hub of the city is Piazza del Duomo, a large, mostly pedestrianized square lorded over by the exaggerated spires of the Duomo, Milan’s cathedral. The piazza was given its present form in 1860 when medieval buildings were demolished to allow grander, unobstructed views of the cathedral, and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II was constructed to link the piazza with the showy new opera theatre, La Scala.


The interior

The interior is striking for its dimension and atmosphere. The five aisles are separated by 52 towering piers, while an almost subterranean half-light filters through the stained-glass windows, lending the marble columns a bone-like hue that led the French writer Suarés to compare the interior to “the hollow of a colossal beast”.

By the entrance, the narrow brass strip embedded in the pavement with the signs of the zodiac alongside is Europe’s largest sundial, laid out in 1786. A beam of light still falls on it through a hole in the ceiling, though changes in the Earth’s axis mean that it’s no longer accurate. To the left of the entrance a door leads down to the remains of a fourth-century Battistero Paleocristiano where the city’s patron saint, Ambrogio, baptized St Augustine in 387 AD.


Close by, beneath the presbytery, the treasury features extravagant silverwork, Byzantine ivory carvings and heavily embroidered vestments. Here, too, is the Duomo’s most surprising exhibit: British artist Mark Wallinger’s haunting video installation Via Dolorosa. Commissioned by the diocese of Milan in a bold attempt to resurrect the role of the Church as a patron of the arts, it comprises a large screen showing the last eighteen minutes of Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, with ninety percent of the image blacked out, leaving just a narrow frame visible round the sides. Beside here is the crypt housing the remains of San Carlo Borromeo, the zealous sixteenth-century cardinal who was canonized for his work among the poor of the city, especially during the Plague of 1630. He lies here in a glass coffin, clothed, bejewelled, masked and gloved, wearing a gold crown attributed to Cellini. Borromeo was also responsible for the large altar in the north transept, erected to close off a door that was used by locals as a shortcut to the market.


The roof
