Is Duomo a good area 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.