Free tours in Milan

Milan is easy to walk because its old town is compact and almost flat, laid out in concentric rings around the Piazza del Duomo. From the Duomo to the Teatro alla Scala is five minutes on foot, and to the Castello Sforzesco little more than fifteen. It is a city best understood on foot: Gothic façades sit alongside 19th-century galleries, palace courtyards and stretches of canal, and you only need the metro for the outlying districts or to land in the Navigli as the afternoon fades.

The first axis is classic, monumental Milan: the Piazza del Duomo, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II with its mosaic floor, the Teatro alla Scala and the medieval Piazza dei Mercanti, all within a ten-minute radius. The second drops down to Roman, canal-borne Milan, with the Colonne di San Lorenzo, the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio and the Darsena, where the Naviglio Grande and the Naviglio Pavese begin, the canals that once carried the marble for the Duomo. The third crosses the Milan of art and fashion: the Brera district and its picture gallery, the Quadrilatero della Moda between Via Montenapoleone and Via della Spiga, and lesser-visited house-museums such as the Villa Necchi Campiglio, a 1930s rationalist gem.

Almost all the free tours leave from the Piazza del Duomo, by the equestrian statue of Vittorio Emanuele II, and last between two hours and two and a half. The best time is the morning, around 10:00 or 11:00, before the square fills up and the summer heat sets in; an afternoon start also works well for ending in the Navigli with an aperitivo. Booking is done online and costs nothing; at the end of the walk you give the guide a voluntary contribution, according to what you made of the visit.