09 May 2024
A secret and mysterious city is hidden in Milan: we are talking about a hidden and underground Milan that tells its story from the time of ancient Mediolanum, the ancestor of the Milan we know today, to the twentieth century. An urban nucleus of real streets, buildings, catacombs, shelters and monuments, in which a loud silence reigns, full of mystery and enclosing in its stones more than a thousand years of history.
It is possible to discover the Secret Milan through various visits and guided tours, fascinating journeys beneath the surface, among ancient legends, artistic treasures, archaeological finds and air-raid shelters moving right among Milan’s symbolic places, from the archaeological area of the Duomo to the secret passages under the Sforzesco Castle, from the Crypt of San Giovanni in Conca to the Roman Forum, and to underground shelters hidden in unbelievable places.
Guided tours of the Secret Milan: places not to be missed:
1.Crypt of San Sepolcro, jewel of ancient Mediolanum
An unmissable stop in the ancient Mediolanum is the Crypt of San Sepolcro. In Piazza San Sepolcro, below the church, you can access the crypt: a building that dates back to the 1000 AD, where you can still admire the original Augustan age floor composed of marble slabs from the Roman forum.
In the Crypt you will find a statue of St. Charles Borromeo in a prayer position, since the saint particularly loved to retire in this quiet place: many are the illustrious personalities who have left their mark in the Crypt and who are now revived in a new acting tour! Moreover, the recently restored wall decorations are a wonderful example of medieval Lombard painting and its imaginative symbolism. Today the Crypt can also be visited during the evening hours, by lanterns light: an exclusive and evocative experience, to feel all the charm of one of the greatest jewels of the Milan underground.
2.World War II air-raid shelters
Taking a time leap forward a few centuries, among the places of the secret Milan it is also possible to visit some spaces that served as air-raid shelters during the years of World War II, such as Refuge 87, a bunker in a school basement in today’s Via Bodio. On the occasion of Open House Milano, an initiative sponsored by the City of Milan thanks to which so many normally inaccessible places in the city are reopened for a weekend, on the 25th and 26th of May 2024, it is also possible to descend into the bunker in Piazza Grandi, which was able to accommodate more than 400 people: visiting it in the company of guides and architects is a unique opportunity!
3. The Milan Underground, from archaeological area to medieval crypts
This secret Milan tour continues with the Milano Sotterranea: we will reveal an archaeological side full of stories and treasures which has his roots in the distant past.
You can see Milan from its underground only descending a few meters below Piazza Duomo. Here, four meters below the cathedral churchyard, there is one of the city’s oldest archaeological complexes: the nucleus of the early Milanese Christianity. The tour continues by fully immersing ourselves in the typical Lombard Romanesque style of the Crypt of San Giovanni in Conca, in Piazza Missori.
Always around the Duomo area you will find the Ambrosiana complex, hides one of Milan’s jewels: it is the Crypt of San Sepolcro. This place stands exactly where the Roman forum once was, in a central location, such that centuries later Leonardo da Vinci wrote that the Crypt of San Sepolcro was truly “in the very middle of Milan.”
3. San Bernardino alle Ossa, a must-see stop in secret Milan
You can’t miss this itinerary of the secret and mysterious Milan: our ghost tour dedicated to the historic center. We start at the Sanctuary of San Bernardino alle Ossa, a splendid late Baroque church and home to Milan’s most astonishing ossuary, a macabre collection of ancient human skeletons, probably belonging to the dead from the San Barnaba in Brolo hospital. The atmosphere is just right to keep looking for the ghosts of the center: such as Carlina, an unfortunate young bride who still hovers over the spires of the Duomo; Giuseppe Mengoni, architect of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II who died under suspicious circumstances on the eve his masterpiece grand opening; or Tommaso Marino, the first owner of the Palazzo in Piazza Scala that is now the Milan City Council headquarter.
5. The Monumental Cemetery
Mysteries, ghosts and dark atmospheres… these are the ingredients of the guided tour of Milan’s Monumental Cemetery. A true open-air museum, which not only has funeral monuments of inestimable artistic value, but is also one of the must-see places in Milan if you want to discover the thousand faces of its mysteries.
The stories of the city’s most illustrious personalities resonate among the tombs and sepulchres built along the cemetery’s tree-lined avenues: neoclassical, late-Romantic or avant-garde architecture, shrouded in the first shadows of twilight or morning mists, in a silent and evocative atmosphere steeped in secrets and sinister stories.
6. St. Ambrose, one of Milan’s secret and mysterious basilicas
Finally, one of the oldest basilicas of the city, the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio, also tells gloomy and mysterious stories, as well as revealing its historical-artistic treasures.
In Piazza Sant’Ambrogio, in front of the basilica there is the so-called Devil’s Column: it is said that the two holes visible in the lower part of the Roman column were caused by the collision of the horns of Satan, who appeared before Saint Ambrose to tempt him, but was forced to flee back to the Underworld…
