Explore Milan

Leonardo3 Museum is an interactive museum about Leonardo da Vinci at the Piazza della Scala entrance of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, opened as an exhibition in 2013. It shows working reconstructions of his machines, such as the mechanical lion and a flying machine, digital restorations of his paintings and a model of the Last Supper refectory as it was in his time.

La Scala is Milan's opera house, designed by Giuseppe Piermarini and inaugurated on 3 August 1778 with Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta. Away from performances, the Museo Teatrale alla Scala shows instruments, costumes and portraits, and when no rehearsal is on visitors can look into the auditorium from a third-tier box.

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a covered shopping arcade linking Piazza del Duomo with Piazza della Scala in Milan. Designed by Giuseppe Mengoni and built between 1865 and 1877, it has four-storey arms roofed in iron and glass that meet beneath a central glass dome above an octagon with floor mosaics.

Casa Manzoni is the house on Via Morone where the novelist Alessandro Manzoni lived from 1814 until his death in 1873. Its terracotta neo-Renaissance front on Piazza Belgioioso dates from 1864, and the museum inside keeps his study and bedroom along with portraits, letters and editions of his works.

Milan Cathedral is the Gothic cathedral of Milan, dedicated to the Nativity of Mary; building began in 1386 and its last details were completed in 1965. Faced in pink-veined Candoglia marble, it is the largest church in Italy outside Vatican City, and stairs and lifts lead up to roof terraces among its spires.

The Royal Palace of Milan stands to the right of the cathedral on Piazza del Duomo and was the seat of the city's government for many centuries, from the medieval commune to the Sforza dukes and later governors. Badly damaged by bombing in 1943, it is now a cultural centre that hosts large temporary art exhibitions.

The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana is the art gallery founded in 1618 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo beside the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, the library he opened in 1609. Its rooms show paintings by Leonardo, Botticelli, Titian and Caravaggio, among them Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit and Raphael's cartoon for The School of Athens.

The Crypt of San Sepolcro is an underground church beneath the church of San Sepolcro, founded in 1030 by the Milanese moneyer Benedetto Rozzone on the site of the forum of Roman Mediolanum. Visitors walk through a hall of columns and low vaults; the crypt is run by the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, which also runs the Pinacoteca nearby.

The Pinacoteca di Brera is Milan's state picture gallery, opened in 1809 in Palazzo Brera, a former Jesuit college rebuilt by Francesco Maria Richini in the 17th century. Its rooms show Italian painting from the 13th to the 20th century, including Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ, Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin and Hayez's The Kiss.

San Bernardino alle Ossa is a church beside Santo Stefano Maggiore in Milan, with an ossuary chapel. A room for bones from a neighbouring cemetery was built in 1210; the church was rebuilt with an octagonal dome after a fire in 1712, and the ossuary's walls are covered in skulls and bones beneath a vault painted by Sebastiano Ricci.

Sforza Castle is a brick fortress built in the 15th century by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, on the remains of a 14th-century Visconti stronghold, and largely rebuilt by Luca Beltrami in 1891–1905. Its courtyards can be walked through, and its halls hold the city's civic museums, including Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà.

Villa Necchi Campiglio is a house museum on Via Mozart in Milan, built in 1932–1935 to designs by the Rationalist architect Piero Portaluppi for the Necchi Campiglio family. Run by the FAI, it keeps its period interiors and art collections, and its garden holds a tennis court and an outdoor swimming pool.

The Milan Natural History Museum was founded in 1838 from the collections of Giuseppe De Cristoforis and Giorgio Jan. Its red-and-cream neo-Romanesque building of 1888–1893 stands in the Indro Montanelli public gardens, and its halls show minerals, fossils, dinosaur skeletons and dioramas of animals in their habitats.

The Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio is one of the oldest churches in Milan, founded by Bishop Ambrose in 379–386 and rebuilt in Romanesque style in the 11th and 12th centuries. An arcaded atrium leads to the brick facade between two bell towers, and the saint's remains lie in the crypt beneath the high altar.

Santa Maria delle Grazie is a Dominican church and convent in Milan whose brick Gothic nave by Guiniforte Solari was completed by 1469. From 1492 the east end was rebuilt with a domed tribune attributed to Donato Bramante. Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper is in the refectory next door, which has its own ticketed entry; the complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Last Supper is Leonardo da Vinci's mural of Jesus and the twelve apostles, painted around 1495–1498 on a wall of the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The refectory is now the Museo del Cenacolo Vinciano, visited in small timed groups; Montorfano's Crucifixion fresco covers the opposite wall.

The Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci opened in 1953 in the former monastery of San Vittore al Corpo, around two cloisters. Its collections trace science, technology and industry in Italy, from models built after Leonardo's drawings to astronomy, energy, steam locomotives, ships and aircraft, and the submarine Enrico Toti stands in the grounds.