The Navigli

Milan was once a city of water, and almost nobody remembers it. For centuries a network of navigable canals connected the city to the Ticino, Lake Maggiore and the Po: the marble of the Duomo arrived this way, on barges. Then, in the twentieth century, nearly all the canals were covered over to make roads.

What remains is two canals to the south-west, and it is where Milan goes to drink.

What is there

The Darsena is the basin where the two canals meet, the city's old port. It was returned to the city by a regeneration project and is now a waterside promenade with the covered market beside it.

The Naviglio Grande runs west from the Darsena: the longest, the most photographed, the one with the balcony houses facing the water and a row of bars along both banks.

The Naviglio Pavese heads south, narrower and less touristy. Walk it for half an hour and you leave the bar stretch behind and find a piece of ordinary Milan.

The Vicolo dei Lavandai, on the Naviglio Grande, is an eighteenth-century covered washhouse with its sloping wooden boards still in place. It is small, you only find it if you look for it, and it is the truest thing in the district.

When to go

By day the Navigli are a neighbourhood: low houses, restorers' and antique dealers' workshops, courtyards, people who live there. You walk along the water, look at the architecture, sit down for a coffee. It is the version almost no tourist sees.

In the evening they are Milan's bar district, and it is worth knowing: from Thursday to Sunday, April to October, it is crowded and loud. If that is what you want, this is the place; if you want a quiet dinner, it is not.

On the last Sunday of the month the Naviglio Grande hosts the big antiques market, hundreds of stalls along the towpath. It is one of the best days of the year to be in the area.

Getting there

Green M2 metro: Porta Genova for the Naviglio Grande, Romolo for the lower Pavese. The Darsena is also a fifteen-minute walk from Sant'Ambrogio.

From our apartments the M2 runs direct from Loreto and Città Studi — about twenty minutes. From Bicocca it is one change.

Sleeping on the Navigli, or not

It is an area that is lovely to spend an evening in and hard to spend a night in. The bars close late, the tables sit under the windows, and at weekends the noise runs until two.

People who live there know it and choose the inner streets. People here for a few days usually find out on the first night.

The practical advice is the same as for Central Station, inverted: you go to the Navigli, you don't sleep there. Twenty minutes on the metro and you are back in a district where it is silent at eleven at night — which, after an evening by the water, is exactly what you need.

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