Tuesday marks the day when Design Week really picks up speed. The Salone opens at the Rho fairgrounds. But the Salone del Mobile is also making its presence felt in the city, at the Castello Sforzesco, where, in the year of Euroluce, the renowned theater director Bob Wilson is creating a show centered around light, with Michelangelo’s Pietà Rondanini taking center stage.

Just a short walk away, in the Brera district – once home to artists, now the showroom district – some of the most beautiful and eagerly anticipated installations of the entire Design Week come to life. In these streets with evocative names – Pontaccio, Fiori Scuri, and Fiori Chiari – queues form outside the doors of places everyone wants to enter. This is also where the exhibitions of several fashion houses at Design Week take place, such as Gucci and 2050+, which we feature in this guide.

But even in other parts of Milan, the neighborhoods reveal must-see installations: from Porta Venezia to 5Vie, and from Via Tortona to the Navigli area, here are the unmissable highlights of this Design Week, handpicked from the many we’ve experienced in recent days.

When a musician writes a composition for a work of art, an installation or a piece of architecture, he or she is usually said to be "setting it to music". But there is no word to describe what Bob Wilson has done: he has created a piece starring a statue - not just any statue, but the unfinished one that Michelangelo worked on until his death. Mother is the timeless meeting of geniuses in the last phase of their lives - to Wilson and Buonarroti we can add Alvo Part, born in 1935, who composed the Stabat Mater that accompanies it. Wilson sets the stage with the orchestra behind the audience.

The stage is entirely devoted to the statue in which the mother and son emerge from a single block. The lights slowly reveal it, illuminate it, walk along it. First it moves, then it seems to repeat itself, in the end a little too predictable. Mother is so perfect and obvious as to be superfluous, as if it had been created by a Bob Wilson GPT. And perhaps the Rondanini Pietà, a symbol of Milan because the citizens bought it with a collective subscription, didn't need it. But it remains one of the unmissable events of this Design Week and a sign that the Salone del Mobile of Maria Porro, who is behind the 'dramatisation' of the Pietà, wants to play an increasingly cultural role in the city.

6:AM, the studio founded in 2018 by Francesco Palù and Edoardo Pandolfo, specializing in the design and production of glass objects, is presenting its first solo exhibition at Milan Design Week 2025. “Two-Fold Silence” is a well-balanced and highly successful blend of Fuorisalone elements: an unprecedented and truly captivating location – the long-abandoned 1930s Cozzi Pool showers, made entirely of solid travertine slabs; a selection of about forty exquisitely refined objects, bridging design and art, between mass production and unique pieces, including original designs by 6:AM and others by well-known names (including Hannes Peer and studiolucaguadagnino); and an excellent abstract and atmospheric soundscape by Invernomuto. Highly recommended.

The more seasoned visitors will know that Fuorisalone is also an opportunity to explore buildings and spaces usually off-limits. The exhibition curated by Campeggi offers a chance to peer (without waiting in line) into one of Milan’s most fascinating skyscrapers: Vico Magistretti and Franco Longoni’s Torre al Parco. In the atrium, a space designed with the attention to detail and materials typical of interior design, a living room has been set up with pieces from the Vico Collection – the series of furniture designed by the master of Italian design, reissued by the company that made democratic design its manifesto.

In the Broomstick coat rack, the Oblò sofa bed, the Ospite bench, the Piccy lounge chair, and the Moma bookshelf, you will find a synthesis of Magistretti’s design philosophy: simple, accessible design born of brilliant ideas, adaptable to a wide range of needs. It is a design that is transformable, nomadic, and versatile, yet so simple that it could be explained over the phone, as he used to say. The exhibition, arranged with the simplicity of a bench that can become a bed, is accompanied by a catalog that tells the story of the building, which you will find there.

Synthetic, silent, and exquisitely refined: the “Bamboo Encounters” exhibition at the Cloisters of San Simpliciano, curated for Gucci by 2050+, the studio of Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, is the perfect antidote to the fatigue of Design Week, which sooner or later affects even the most experimental “salonists.” The theme proposed by the Maison – a reflection on the bamboo used for the handle of the iconic 1947 bag – is interpreted by seven designers and artists in synthetic and abstract forms.

It often appears in negative space or through carefully chosen details, avoiding any vernacular intrusion. The stage and pavilion, designed by 2050+, serve as both a backdrop and a container that match the quality of the works. The kites of Kite Club, gently swaying in the cloister’s sky, are the poetic cherry on top of an exhibition that truly deserves to extend beyond the narrow temporal confines of the Fuorisalone.

Flashing lights, psychedelic music, and the most iconic pieces of international design. This is the Superdesign Show exhibition, which, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, has brought together all the objects that have defined its history in a single room. Nanda Vigo’s 1971 Acerbis armchair, Mackintosh’s 1902 Hill House 1, Joe Colombo’s Minikitchen, and Shiro Kuramata’s Revolving Cabinet are just a few of the icons you will find in this “Unforgettable” exhibition.

But those hoping to snap a picture of anything will need to put in some effort, because this is far from an Instagrammable exhibition: from above, the lights flash on and off over the furnishings, which are visible for only a few seconds, cycling in a seemingly chaotic and disorienting loop. If you have more time, we recommend checking out the spaces dedicated to “happy objects,” where you’ll find miniature chairs you can hold in the palm of your hand, tributes to Marcel Duchamp, and transparent partitions.

It seems that the Italian press, at least initially, did not react positively to the idea of a funeral collection by Alessi. Of course, this reaction only makes it more intriguing, and the collection of urns on display at the library on Via Osti, designed by De Lucchi, is a small delight of discontinuity amid the much more obvious displays at the Fuorisalone.

Leading names in design, including De Lucchi himself, 2020 Domus guest editor David Chipperfield, and Audrey Large, present urns for both humans and animals, each with literary accompaniments. Philippe Starck and his wife Jasmine present an unusual combination: a bone urn paired with a three-dimensional photograph of the deceased. Anastassiades’ design is inspired by Ancient Egypt, while the urn to be held in the arms is by Giulio Iacchetti, who also co-created the Tornitore Matto project with Alberto Alessi, under which these urns were developed.

On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2025, Domus returns to the Politecnico di Milano on April 9 at 5:00 PM for a meeting with Bjarke Ingels, founder of the architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), guest editor of the magazine in 2025, and one of the foremost global figures in contemporary architecture. Ingels will give a lecture focusing on materials, which are the protagonists of his Domus 2025 issue, and on Materialism Revisited.

Rather than a symbol of consumerism, materialism can be reclaimed as the foundation of design, craftsmanship, and spatial creation. By exploring the dynamic interaction between materials, technology, and human ideals, it becomes possible to rethink the built environment as a space for diversity, dialogue, and new ways of living.

Opening image: Mother by Robert Wilson. Photo Lucie Jansch