City Info
Italy | Milan
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City | Internship | Language course | Accommodation
Milan is the first largest city of Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy. It is the capital in the Province of Milan, as well as the regional capital of Lombardy. The municipality (Comune di Milano) has a population of 1.3 million, while its urban area is about 4.5 million. The Milan metropolitan area is the largest in Italy, with a population of 7.4 million. Milan is renowned as one of the world capitals of design and fashion. The Lombard metropolis is famous for its fashion houses and shops (such as along via Montenapoleone) and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in the Piazza Duomo (reputed to be the world's oldest shopping mall). The city hosted the World Exposition in 1906 and will host the Universal Expo in 2015. Inhabitants of Milan are referred to as "Milanese".
There are few remains of the ancient Roman colony which later became a capital of the Western Roman Empire. During the second half of the 4th century BC, Saint Ambrose was bishop of Milan and had a strong influence on the layout of the city, redesigning the centre (even if the cathedral and baptistery built by Ambrose are now lost) and building the great basilicas at the city gates: Saint Ambros, Saint Nazarus, Saint Simplician and Saint Eustorgius, which still stand, refurbished over the centuries, as some of the finest and most important churches in Milan. The biggest and greatest example of Gothic architecture in Italy, the Milan Cathedral, is the third largest cathedral in the world. Built between 1386 and 1577, it hosts the world's largest collection of marble statues with the widely visible golden Madonna statue on top of the spire, nicknamed by the people of Milan as Madunina (the little Madonna), that became one of the symbols of the city.
Milan has a great variety of places where you can have fun. A great starting point is Como Avenue (Corso Como), near Garibaldi Station, full of bars and glamorous clubs. In the summertime, this street is packed with a lot of young and attractive people. Another place where you can go is Navigli quarter, near Porta Ticinese Avenue and XXIV Maggio Square, where you can find a lot of small pubs, open air cafes and restaurants by the water canals (navigli) that were used throughout history as communication means to connect Milan with other cities. In many pubs and bars you can find a free booklet named Zero2 which is a guide to Milan Nightlife: if you don't know what to do or where to go, do grab one! There are bars and clubs open all week long but usually few people go out at night on Mondays or Tuesdays, the vast majority prefer to have fun on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. However, Wednesday night appears to be one of the coolest to go out in stylish VIP-frequented clubs.
Milan is one of the major financial and business centres of the world. Were it a country, it would rank as the twenty-eighth largest economy in the world, almost as large as the Greek economy. The city is the seat of the Italian Stock Exchange (the Borsa Italiana) and its hinterland is the largest industrial area in Italy. Today Milan is a major centre for the production of textile and garments, automobiles, chemicals, industrial tools, heavy machinery, book and music publishing. Milan is also considered to be the fashion center of the world. The place has headquarters and businesses of some of the leading international designers. The city also provides directional functions for the whole of Lombardy, as its industrial base has been externalized throughout the region in the 1960s and the 1970s. FieraMilano, the exhibition center, had a fair ground known as "FieraMilanoCity", which was dismantled, except for a few remarkable buildings (including the cycle sports stadium, built in the '20s), to be house for an urban development, CityLife, exploiting its vicinity to the city centre. The new fair ground, in the north-western suburb of Rho, which was opened in April 2005, makes the Fiera Milano the largest trade fair complex in the world.
As you can see there is a wide variety of industries where you could gain experience through an internship in Milan.
