Trade fairs and events in Milan

Milan lives in weeks. There are seven or eight periods a year when the city doubles its population, hotels sell out and prices multiply. Knowing which ones they are, and booking first, is the difference between an easy trip and an expensive one.

The weeks that fill the city

Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone, April. The biggest event of the year. The Salone itself is at the Rho exhibition centre, but the Fuorisalone spills into every neighbourhood with installations, exhibitions and parties: Brera, Tortona, Isola, Ventura Lambrate. The city becomes one diffuse exhibition. It is the hardest week to find a bed.

Fashion weeks, February and September. Twice a year, shorter but just as intense on the centre.

The Rho fairs — design, crafts, food, machinery — fill much of the calendar with trade events that bring professionals into the city.

Concerts and matches at San Siro and the Forum fill single evenings. If your stay lands on a big concert, you will have worked it out from the prices.

Where it actually pays to stay

Instinct says "as close to the fairground as possible". That is almost always the wrong instinct: there is no city around Rho, there is an exhibition complex surrounded by slip roads, and you come back to the centre in the evening anyway.

What matters is being on the red line, or one change from it. The M1 reaches Rho Fiera without a change from the centre and from the whole eastern axis of the city.

From our apartments:

• From Città Studi and Loreto: direct M1 to Rho Fiera, about forty minutes.
• From Bicocca: M5 with one change to the M1, about forty-five minutes — and without crossing the centre at rush hour, which during fair weeks is a genuine advantage.

In exchange, during the busiest weeks, you sleep in a neighbourhood where people actually live: residential prices, restaurants without a waiting list, and quiet in the evening.

When to book

• Salone del Mobile: six months to a year ahead. That is not an exaggeration.
• Fashion weeks: three or four months ahead.
• Trade fairs: two months is usually enough, except for the largest.
• Concerts: as soon as dates are announced.

Booking early is not only about finding a room, it is about finding one at a normal price. The same nights that cost one figure in January cost twice that in March.

What to see when there is no fair

Milan has a reputation as a city you can see in a day. That is false, though it is true that its treasures are not all on the main square:

• Leonardo's Last Supper, in Santa Maria delle Grazie — booking compulsory, well in advance.
• The Pinacoteca di Brera and the neighbourhood around it.
• The Castello Sforzesco and Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà.
• Pirelli HangarBicocca, contemporary art in a former factory, free admission.
• The Monumental Cemetery, an open-air sculpture museum that almost nobody visits.
• The Fondazione Prada and its bar designed by Wes Anderson.
• The Navigli in the evening, knowing they will be busy.

And the ritual that beats a museum: the aperitivo, between seven and nine, which in Milan is a meal disguised as a drink.

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