A beginner’s guide to the Milano Design Week

A direct reflection of the Milanese lifestyle, of which, after all, Design Week is a direct emanation in its merits as well as its flaws, the anxiety of missing something fundamental will accompany all visitors, even veterans. The solution is first to take it with a certain philosophical resignation, because in an event so widespread, so capillary, and with such a level of autarky, missing a piece of the puzzle is practically a certainty. On the other hand, to limit the damage, it is important to get organized, to know the (complex) geography of the event, to handle the key concepts, not to waste time because you have the wrong shoes and have to go back to the hotel. First of all, get to know yourself, as the father of maieutics used to repeat: you have to understand what you came to see - maybe you are here for Alcova, maybe you have a professional interest in the Salone, or maybe for the chairs made from salvaged materials that a Finnish former Politecnico student  showcases in his dining room in Maciachini. Design week is also beautiful because it is varied and there is something for everyone. Recommended, of course, is browsing through Domus’ online guides, which from Monday, April 15 and for the duration of the Fuorisalone will list 5 must-see things every day.

Let’s rewind the tape and start with the basics. The reason we’re here is a story that begins in 1961 when Cosmit (Comitato Organizzatore Salone Mobile Italiano) inaugurated the first edition at the Fiera di Milano - in the area where CityLife is today. 328 companies participated, and there were 12,000 visitors. Not bad, but nothing compared to the approximately 370 thousand visitors that converged at the new Fiera - the one in Rho - in the pre-Covid era. For this edition there will be nearly 2000 exhibitors. The Fair opens on Tuesday, April 18, and closes on the 23rd, and you should know that if you’re not an insider, chances are you won’t set foot there at all. In alternate years, the Fair is accompanied by Euroluce and Workplace 3.0, exhibition aggregates dedicated to lighting and the world of work present during this edition, and by EuroCucina (kitchen exhibition) and Salone Internazionale del Bagno (baths). Sometimes, somewhat vaguely, the term Salone is used to refer to all of Design Week, but it is important to understand the difference with Fuorisalone (cf “Fuorisalone”).

It is common for events, presentations and meeting opportunities to be held in the host city during a trade show. It is decidedly less frequent that these end up eclipsing the fair itself: this is what happened with Fuorisalone, which was born spontaneously in the 1980s, as a normal satellite version of what was happening at the Fair, and then grew and grew and grew again, finding its first formalization in 1991, when the magazine Interni dedicated a guide to it for the first time, listing about fifty events. It would take a few more years before it became the worldwide event as we know it, transcending the furniture sector from which it originated to involve major players in global industry, from automotive to technology to fashion, players with large-scale investments and planning. Domus first recorded the term “Fuori Salone” in 1998, reporting on an installation by Ferruccio Laviani for the De Padova store.

This is the key concept to make your own before tackling the Fuorisalone, which splits Milan into a selection of zones where the range of things to visit is concentrated. There’s Brera, the neighborhood that was once working-class, of artists and dotted with closed houses, now converted to a somewhat radical chic institution. It remains very elegant and here there is the largest concentration of rank showrooms in Milan, followed closely by Via Durini, not far from the Duomo. There is Tortona, where research travels hand in hand with more broadly popular installations and the rivers of Negroni. There was Lambrate, the Ventura district, where those who found Brera a little too snob and Tortona excessively mainstream ended up going. In the fluidization of recent years this is no longer the case, Lambrate is dead and alternatives like Alcova or Porta Venezia have sprung up. Other historic districts include Isola and Cinque Vie, plus Bovisa. And the Statale, Milan’s old hospital (Hemingway recovered here!) turned into university, a stage just a stone’s throw from the Duomo (aka the real centre of the city) for many large installations, beloved mostly by the uninitiated and especially by the sciure. And this year marks the debut of a new district around via Paolo Sarpi, at the heart of Milan’s Chinatown. 

Without having a banlieu (thankfully!), and with smaller proportions, almost by a half, Milan is a bit like Paris: a relatively small municipality with few inhabitants, surrounded by a gigantic conurbation - between six and seven and a half million inhabitants, depending on how you calculate them, for about 1.3 million city residents. In recent years, it is the very concept of the city center that has expanded in Milan, with areas that have fallen asleep in the suburbs to suddenly wake up central (and expensive). Design Week reflects this with new exhibition areas, which seem to be moving on the axis toward Rho, where there is the Fiera and then the Salone. Last year with Alcova’s rehabilitation of part of the former military hospital in Baggio, and this year with the Baranzate district. You can be fairly certain, however, that if you ask a Milanese person today where Baranzate is, he or she will not be able to answer you. Let’s see in a couple of weeks.

Now unusable, it has long been the symbol of Fuorisalone euphoria. The bridge connected the Navigli, Milan’s historic place of gozzoviglie, with more bars than residents, with Tortona, undoubtedly the district most prone to bacchanalia and open bars (see “Open bar”), a very powerful magnet for aperitivo hour (and drinking hours afterwards) in design week time. The outpouring of people, driven by alcoholic ardor, social spasm and springtime optimism, regularly created a blockage of the bridge, a narrow gut that overcrowded to the point of being impassable. The bridge remains as a monument to times now past, to the pioneers of those early mass Fuorisalone, with Japanese design students drunk asleep on the sidewalks, the smoke from the sausages sticking to your clothes for weeks despite multiple washes, presentations in some basement communicated a few hours earlier via MMS. That was when you could still meet internationally renowned designers in the parking lot of a Stephenson Street rave, seated on an April pulled out of the trunk of a BMW station wagon, drinking an ice-cold can of beer with your shirt unbuttoned, waiting for the rain to come down (cf: “Weather.).

These are the legendary fountains of Milan, found on every corner of the city, dispensing the so-called mayor’s water. Useful to cool off on sultry days, or to refill your water bottle, since this water is perfectly drinkable.

Milan is definitely not the greenest city in Europe, but it does have a system of parks and gardens, or small tree-lined oases, especially in the central areas, that can provide a cozy shelter for those who have had a Fuorisalone hangover and want to take a break. Benches, that of course are painted in green, can be found almost everywhere in the city, many are in the shade of a few trees, but for visitors to Design Week to keep in mind there will be, above all, gardens: those of Porta Venezia, not far from the Brera Design District (see “Districts”), and Sempione Park, which borders the district; the Guastalla, behind the Statale. All of these are historic parks: among the new ones, Baden-Powell, on the Navigli, and the very Instagrammable Biblioteca degli Alberi, a green hillock that well represents the typically Milanese obsession with putting an overload of design (with a very clever marketing twist) into its most recent projects, may come in handy.

Needless to say, the advice is to aim for comfortable shoes, because your apps will be setting the walking record for the year these days. If you don’t know much about sneakers, avoid Hogans (for goodness sake!) and refer to our list with the best of all time. Clothes that are also comfortable and light, with a chic touch for when the sun goes down. Of course, if they are Miyake or Margiela, or signed by Craig Green or Hussein Chalayan it’s better, and if you don’t know who they are please Google them: don’t forget that you’re in Milan, which remains the fashion capital even in the age when knowing how to dress means choosing the right sock to match your Suicoke sandal more than making without needing a mirror the Windsor knot on your Marinella tie to wear with your blue double-breasted coat.

The only certainty of the Design Week is that it will rain. There were few other certainties in life and so you can expect downpours if you're coming to Milan this year. But the city also sports mild weather, with spring in its infancy boosted by the climate crisis, so expect to spot skirts and short-sleeved shirts sprouted on the lawns of Milan’s gardens and demi-shadowed cloisters of old city palazzos among sping’s first loves. 

Complicated by exorbitant cab fares, and the tendency to avoid the car (the Milanese doc gets around by moped, although lately they are broadening their mobility horizons), a vast network of sharing vehicles, easily accessible via app, has been installed in the city in recent years: cars and mopeds. Plus bikes-even electric ones-and scooters, which can take advantage of the bike lanes: there aren’t as many as in an advanced European city, but they’re still more than the last time you were at a Salon. Dutch friends, however, mopeds on bike paths, no thank you. Milan also has a good public transportation network, and the subway (with the passante, our S-Bahn) will cover most of the Fuorisalone visitor’s travel needs, with the Rho Fair easily accessible. Linate airport is finally connected to the city center via the new M4 subway. From Malpensa there is a convenient little train, while connections to Orio airport, where many low-cost airlines land, rely on wheeled transport. And for those who are already terrified of going to the Alcova villas in Brianza, consider that there is the very convenient passante train (line S2, Varedo stop).

In general, for Design Week, especially in hot spots like Tortona and Brera, expect a lot of traffic, and extreme difficulty in parking your car. For those who might want to opt for a cab, it must be said that in post-Covid Milan there seem to be fewer than ever, and you’ll want to make reservations, especially for after-dinner commutes. In this case beware, the taxi driver sometimes shows up early and the meter goes through the roof before the customer even gets into the seat. The taxi phone in Milan is 024040, 028585, 026969. Beware of illegal taxis and remember that Uber, even if with limitations and prices comparable to those of taxis, works.

For city commuting, the real delight is to use the streetcars: in most cases very slow, immersed in city traffic, they crisscross the city offering some of the best and most original views, both from the window and inside, with the alternating passengers telling the story of the city’s different neighborhoods like a Hopper painting on tracks. 

If you have not yet booked when you are reading this article, your situation is not good. For years Milan has been sold-out on Booking and Airbnb the week before the Salone, despite the fact that supply is expanding because so many residents, if they can afford it, flee the city by making their homes available at often exorbitant prices. It has to be said that Milan is now a gigantic city reaching as far as Turin on one side, Pavia going south, Bergamo and Brescia on the northeast axis, and reaching it by train from places like Lecco or Como, overlooking the lake, conveniently getting off at stations in the city center, is perhaps the most suitable choice for those who have not found homes in the center, almost certainly better than some suburb far from the subway or the passante.

Ask anyone living in Milan what the most popular cuisine in the city is, and they will probably answer: sushi. In a peculiar case of cultural syncretism, almost a boomerang effect of the city’s international attitude, where in Rome and Venice you go for sure with a traditional gricia or bigoli in sauce, in Milan it is sushi, in its all-you-can-eat version, that embodies the typical city dish of the new millennium. But the truth is that the offer in the city is varied and with very high quality, with a post-Expo 2015 surge: there are the stellati of the big Italian names (Bartolini, Berton, Cracco, Oldani, Aimo and Nadia, Guida), the innovative homegrown (Contraste, or Trippa, where getting a table is a nightmare), the starry/ex-starry Asians (Aalto-Iyo, Yoji Tokuyoshi’s Bentoteca), the growing districts (take Via Melzo, or the Loreto area for Asian restaurants, and the new, massive Mercato Centrale at Milano's main train station). But you can also happen to spend 20 euros a head for a mesto tagliere in Brera. The advice is always to book well in advance: Milan is a small city compared to the number of Design Week visitors. And if you want to buck the trend, try a risotto with ossobuco (okay, not the top in June) or schnitzel (local variation of schnitzel), typical Milanese dishes long before sushi. One note: If you are vegetarian, or especially vegan, be prepared to suffer a bit: at some places, you may end up having to order a side dish (hoping they didn’t throw in bacon). But if you want to console yourself, try Joia, Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant.

A gently reminder: everyone that ordering a cappuccino after dinner in Italy is seen as a weirdo.

In a peculiar case of semantic translation, “open bar” for most city residents is synonymous with “design week.” Endless queues, bouts of panic when the last bottle of Absolut runs out, and sweat-soaked shirts that gradually undo themselves to scenes worthy of The Hangover are a great classic of post-Salone evenings, and they bring side by side old viveurs, new viveurs, very young designers and design caryatids, a sprinkling of fashion people, someone who just happens to be there. For the past few years, the social epicenter these days has gravitated around Bar Basso, one of the few historic Milanese bars that has retained its soul, where we drink the wrong Negroni, created by bartender Mirko Stocchetto, who flew in from Cortina to turn what was at the time a beer hall into a city legend. Of course you pay, we are in one of the most bourgeois areas of Milan, but it is worth it: ask for Maurizio and opt for the large cup, a small one is not enough. We also remind you that Milan is full of many excellent bars, and there is not only Bar Basso.

In post-Covid Milan, using paper and not cash is now common. For those looking for an alternative to the card-or to the mobile payment services from Apple, Samsung and Google-there is Satispay, a convenient app that is accepted by many bars in the city, where a coffee costs a euro or so and paying for it with a credit card could create some discontent among baristas. Remember also that cabs (see “Taxis, traffic& transportation”) are required to accept card payments, although they often pretend to fall off the pear tree and demand cash. In any case, always better to keep a spare 50 euros in your pocket, because you never know, especially as soon as you leave the city limits and return to the monetary middle ages.

Design Week is said to be an excellent opportunity for those who live in the city to discover its lesser-known corners. Those who visit it for the Salone, and want to break away from the flow of events, can take advantage of it to discover in turn treasures that are off the usual routes: not only the Duomo, for example, but also these three 20th-century churches.