Where to stay in Milan

Milan's centre is a circle about 1.5 km across, bounded by the streets that replaced the medieval canals. Everything a first visit is built around is inside it: the Duomo, the Galleria, La Scala, the Castello Sforzesco, Sant'Ambrogio, the Quadrilatero della Moda and the Colonne di San Lorenzo. Nothing in that list is more than a twenty-minute walk from anything else in it.

Four metro lines cross the district - M1 and M3 at the Duomo, M2 at Cadorna, M4 at San Babila and Santa Sofia - which matters less for getting around the centre than for leaving it. M4 reaches Linate in about fifteen minutes, and Cadorna is where the Malpensa Express starts. If your trip is two nights and a list of sights, this is the address that wastes the least of it.

What you are buying is location and nothing else. Rates here are the highest in the city and rise again for fashion week in February and September and for the big fairs; the streets around Via Torino are solid people from mid-morning to evening; and the restaurants with a view of the cathedral charge for the view. The district is also inside Area C, the congestion charge, which is a daily fee if you arrive by car and a reason not to.

Brera is the small grid between La Scala and the Moscova, and it looks like the Milan people expect before they arrive: narrow streets, shuttered palazzi, art shops and the Pinacoteca di Brera, which holds one of the two or three best painting collections in Italy. The Duomo is a ten-minute walk south and the Castello five minutes west.

It is a good district to sleep in as well as to walk through, which is not true of everywhere central. Lanza and Moscova on M2 and Turati on M3 are inside it, the streets are residential above the ground floor, and the food is aimed at people who live here as much as at visitors - though the two are not always easy to tell apart on Via Fiori Chiari.

The catch is the price and the evenings. Rooms cost what Duomo rooms cost, hotels are small and book out early, and the bar streets in the middle of the district are one of the two places Milan's own nightlife guidance names as overcrowded. If you want Brera's mornings without its Fridays, book on the northern side towards Moscova rather than around Via Brera itself.

Magenta is the strip running west from the Duomo along Corso Magenta to Sant'Ambrogio and the old San Vittore prison: patrician palazzi behind gates, Santa Maria delle Grazie with the Last Supper on its refectory wall, the Sant'Ambrogio basilica, and the Cadorna interchange at the top.

It is the best-value central booking in Milan, and the reason is that nothing loud is here. You are ten to fifteen minutes on foot from the Duomo through the Castello park or down Via Meravigli, on M1 and M2, and four minutes from Cadorna where the Malpensa Express leaves. The streets are residential above the ground floor, so it is quiet by 23:00 in a way that Brera and Ticinese are not.

What you trade is street life. Corso Magenta has good bars and a couple of serious restaurants and then it stops - the aperitivo crowd is in Brera or on the Navigli, twenty minutes away, and you will walk or take the metro to it every evening. Book the Last Supper before you book the room: tickets go months out and the room is worth much less without it.

Sarpi is the wedge between the Castello and the Monumentale cemetery, built around Via Paolo Sarpi - a pedestrian street that has been Milan's Chinese quarter since the 1920s and is now the densest run of Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese kitchens in Italy.

As a base it is unglamorous and very practical. The Duomo is a twenty-minute walk or two stops, Brera and Garibaldi are next door, rooms cost noticeably less than either, and you can eat extremely well for fifteen euros at eleven at night, which in central Milan is close to impossible.

The drawbacks are honest ones. There is nothing to see here beyond the Monumentale cemetery on the edge, the architecture is plain post-war blocks rather than anything you photograph, and Via Sarpi itself is busy and loud until late. The nearest metro is Monumentale on M5 or Moscova on M2, both a five to ten minute walk from most of the district - closer to a tram city than a metro one.

Pagano is the residential quarter west of the old walls, hung on Corso Vercelli - the shopping street Milanese use when they cannot face Corso Buenos Aires - and reaching out to Piazza Piemonte and the Fiera edge. It is nineteenth and twentieth-century apartment blocks with porters, and it is one of the wealthiest addresses in the city.

Booking here is a transport decision. M1 runs under Corso Vercelli with two stations inside the district, so the Duomo is six minutes and San Siro is fifteen, and rooms cost about a third less than the equivalent in Brera. If you are here for a match, a trade fair or a concert at the Ippodromo, it is the obvious base.

Otherwise it is unremarkable. Nothing historic survives here, the restaurants are competent neighbourhood places rather than destinations, and the district goes to sleep early. It is a 25-minute walk to the Duomo along a busy road, and if you want to be somewhere in the evening you will be taking M1 back into town.

Corso di Porta Ticinese runs from the edge of the centre down to the Darsena, and the district is essentially that street and the blocks either side of it. It is the compromise most people are actually looking for in Milan: eighteen minutes on foot from the Duomo, five minutes from the canals, and rooms priced below both.

It has more of interest than its length suggests - Sant'Eustorgio and the Basilicas Park at one end, the Porta Ticinese gate and the Darsena at the other, and the second-hand and independent shops along the corso in between. The aperitivo route that Milan is known for starts at the Colonne di San Lorenzo and works south into this district before it reaches the canals.

The weakness is transport. No metro station falls inside the district; Vetra and Santa Sofia on the new M4 sit on its northern edge, and everything else is trams 3, 9, 10 and 15, which are frequent but slow in traffic. The other weakness is the same as its strength: you are on the drinking route, so a room over the corso will hear it until the small hours on a Saturday.

The Naviglio Grande and the Naviglio Pavese meet at the Darsena, and both banks are bars, cheap restaurants and, on the last Sunday of the month, a 400-stall antiques market. From about 18:00 the towpaths fill and stay full; this is where Milan drinks, and it is genuinely good at it.

By daylight it is a different proposition. Beyond the water there is little to see - the district is residential, the buildings are ordinary, and every sight on your list is a metro ride away rather than a walk. Porta Genova on M2 is inside the district and gets you to the Duomo in about ten minutes, which you will use, because the walk is nearly half an hour.

Book here if the evening is the point of the trip. Book one street back from the water, on Via Casale or Via Corsico, unless you want the towpath noise until 02:00 through a single-glazed window. And check the dates: the canals are drained for cleaning in the spring and autumn asciutta, and for those weeks the view from the room is an empty concrete channel.

Guastalla is the quarter inside the old walls between San Babila and Porta Vittoria: the Guastalla gardens, the Rotonda della Besana, the university hospital, the Palazzo di Giustizia and the streets of nineteenth-century blocks around them. It is central Milan without the shopping crowds, and most visitors never learn it has a name.

That anonymity is the reason to book it. The Duomo is a ten-minute walk, Porta Romana's restaurants start at the southern edge, the new M4 line stops twice inside the district, and rooms cost less than the same distance north into Brera or west into Magenta. The Besana rotunda and the botanical garden are two of the few genuinely quiet outdoor places in the centre.

The trade is that this is a working district of offices, courts and hospitals. It empties at the weekend, the courthouse blocks are grim to walk past after dark even though nothing happens there, and there is no sight here that anyone flies to Milan for. You are buying ten quiet minutes from the Duomo, which is a good thing to buy and not an exciting one.

Porta Romana runs from the Crocetta down Corso di Porta Romana to the gate itself and on towards Lodi: nineteenth-century blocks, the Rotonda della Besana, the university hospital, and Fondazione Prada in a converted distillery at the southern end.

This is the district Milanese recommend when they are not trying to impress you. It has the density of good restaurants and bars that Brera has, at about two thirds of the price and without the queues, and M3 puts the Duomo four minutes away and the Centrale station eight. Walking in takes twenty minutes down a straight, arcaded street.

The honest gaps: none of Milan's famous sights are here apart from Prada, the corso is a wide traffic road rather than anything picturesque, and the southern end towards Lodi TIBB gets progressively more ordinary and more industrial. Book the half inside the gate; anything advertised as Porta Romana but nearer Piazzale Lodi is a different district that shares a metro line.

The district is Corso Buenos Aires and the streets either side, running north-east from Porta Venezia to Piazzale Loreto. The corso is one of the longest shopping streets in Europe, which makes it loud and useful in equal measure, and the side streets behind it are quiet nineteenth-century blocks with the cheapest genuinely central hotel rooms in Milan.

Transport is the argument for it. Porta Venezia, Lima and Loreto are M1, Loreto is also M2, and Tricolore at the southern tip is on M4, so Linate, the Duomo and Centrale are all a short ride away. The walk to the Duomo is about twenty-five minutes through the Giardini Pubblici, which is a pleasant way to arrive and not a fast one.

The eating is the other argument: this is where Milan's Eritrean and Ethiopian restaurants are, along with the city's main gay bars around Via Lecco and Porta Venezia. The direction matters, though. Quality falls off as you go north, and Piazzale Loreto at the top of the corso is one of three places Wikivoyage names as unpleasant after dark. Rooms get cheaper towards it, and that is what you are paying less for.

Isola sits north of the railway and the Porta Nuova towers, close enough to have been rebuilt around them and far enough to have kept its own streets. Piazza Minniti and the streets off it hold the concentration of restaurants and bars that the centre has largely priced out, and the crowd in them is Milanese rather than visiting.

It is well placed for a second visit and awkward for a first. The metro station Isola on M5 is inside the district and Porta Garibaldi - M2, M5, the Passante and the fast trains to Turin and Rome - is five minutes south, so the network is excellent. On foot, the Duomo is thirty-five minutes and there is nothing on the way except the tracks.

Rooms cost less than Brera for more space, and the district is quiet on weeknights. Set against that: apart from the Cimitero Monumentale a few streets west, there is nothing here that anyone would call a sight, the Porta Nuova side is a building site more often than not, and the weekend evenings around Piazza Minniti are loud enough to matter if your window faces it.

The district runs from Piazza della Repubblica up to and past Milano Centrale, and it is really two places. The southern end, around Repubblica and Via Turati, is grand hotels, offices and the Giardini; the northern end, on Via Napo Torriani, Via Vitruvio and Via Scarlatti, is the cheap hotel belt, dozens of two- and three-star places within 400 m of the platforms.

The case for booking here is transport and nothing else, but it is a strong case. Every high-speed train in Italy stops at Centrale, the Malpensa Express leaves from it, M2 and M3 cross underneath, and the coach from Bergamo arrives outside. If Milan is one stop on a longer trip, or you are in and out on business, that is worth real money.

The case against is the ground you cross to reach it. The forecourt and the streets immediately around the station are the specific place Milan's safety warnings are about, and the business blocks south of it empty out completely at night. The rooms themselves are ordinary and safe; it is the walk back at 01:00 that is not, so book near Repubblica if the budget allows, and use the metro rather than walking the last stretch late.

Loreto is the piazzale where Corso Buenos Aires ends and Viale Monza begins, plus the blocks around it. It is a traffic interchange above a metro interchange, and it is where the cheapest rooms with a central-sounding address in Milan are advertised.

The transport genuinely is good: M1 and M2 cross here, so the Duomo is seven minutes and Centrale two, and the whole length of Corso Buenos Aires - the longest shopping street in Europe - starts at your door. If price is the only variable, that combination is hard to beat.

Everything else argues against it. Wikivoyage names Loreto alongside the central station and Porto di Mare as areas that can be unsafe at night, and the piazzale itself is six lanes of traffic with no reason to linger. There is nothing to see, nothing to walk to, and the streets north-east towards Viale Monza get steadily bleaker. If the saving over Porta Venezia - fifteen minutes further down the same street and the same metro line - is small, take Porta Venezia.

People book San Siro for one of two reasons: a match at the Meazza, or a rate that looks like a bargain next to the centre's. Neither survives contact with the district. The stadium is on M5 and tram 16, so you can sleep anywhere central and be in your seat in half an hour, and the saving on the room is spent on the journeys you make instead of walking.

The district itself is arterial roads, the ippodromo, and the Quartiere San Siro, a large inter-war public housing estate that is one of the poorest parts of the city. There is no restaurant street, no square worth sitting in, and nothing on any visitor's list except the stadium and the horses. The Duomo is 5 km east - about seventy-five minutes on foot, or twenty-five on M5 with a change.

The honest version of the argument for it: if you are driving, it is outside Area C, parking exists and the western ring road is close. That is a real advantage and it is the only one, and it is not usually worth what it costs in time for the rest of the stay.