Garibaldi and Corso Como: Milan's Design-Forward North

The Garibaldi district anchors Milan's northern regeneration story, a neighbourhood that rebuilt itself around the 2015 Expo legacy and the Porta Nuova development project to become the city's most visually striking contemporary quarter. The Bosco Verticale — the twin residential towers wrapped in more than 900 trees and 20,000 plants, winner of the International Highrise Award and possibly the most photographed building in modern Italy — stands as the visual centrepiece of a district that now includes the Unicredit Tower, Milan's tallest skyscraper, and a cascade of glass office buildings that would look at home in Frankfurt or Singapore. What keeps Garibaldi interesting is that this architecture sits directly beside the old Isola neighbourhood and the creative Corso Como strip.

Corso Como is the street that made Milan's reputation for high-concept retail: the original 10 Corso Como store, opened by Carla Sozzani in 1991, established the format of the concept store as gallery-bookshop-restaurant-hotel that has since been replicated worldwide, and the original remains its best iteration. The building's courtyard, planted with olive trees and scattered with contemporary art, functions as an outdoor salon for Milan's fashion industry during and between the collections. The surrounding streets hold Michelin-starred restaurants, serious cocktail bars, and the kind of home design showrooms — Cappellini, Cassina, Molteni — that make the district an education in Italian design culture for anyone willing to walk in off the street.

Garibaldi station itself is a transport hub of remarkable efficiency, connecting the Passante railway, three metro lines, and surface trams in a single complex that doubles as an underground shopping mall. Above ground, the Piazza Gae Aulenti — named for the architect who designed the neighbourhood's transformation — is a pedestrian plaza with fountains that fills with aperitivo crowds on summer evenings and weekend families year-round. The view north from the plaza, with the Alps visible on clear winter days behind the tower cluster, is one of the genuinely unexpected pleasures of a city that usually asks its visitors to look down at the cobblestones rather than up at the horizon.