Milan with kids: a local’s guide beyond the Duomo

Milan gets a hard time from travellers. They come for a day, tick off the Duomo and Leonardo’s Last Supper, decide the city is all business and no charm, and hurry off to Lake Como. Having lived there for years, I always want to catch them by the sleeve. Milan is not a museum to be marched through, it is a city people actually live in, and with children in tow it is one of the easiest and most rewarding places in Italy. Here is where a Milanese family really spends a weekend.

Start where the locals start, in the green. Behind the great brick Castello Sforzesco lies Parco Sempione, the city’s big central park, and on any fine weekend it is full of Milanese families doing very little in the nicest way: pushchairs, footballs, gelato, a lap of the pond. Let the children tear about while you sit under the trees. The castle courtyards are free to wander, wonderfully atmospheric and just the right size for small legs, and there is a little civic aquarium at the park’s edge, one of the oldest in Europe, that makes a gentle, cheap half-hour out of the sun or the rain.

When small legs tire, do what every child secretly wants to and ride a tram. Milan’s old orange trams, the wooden-seated ones from the 1920s, still rattle around the centre, and to a child a ride on one is every bit as good as any sight. Hop on, watch the city slide past, hop off when something looks interesting. It costs the price of a ticket and buys you half an hour of happy peace.

For a rainy day, or an over-hot one, skip the grown-up galleries and head for the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, named for Leonardo da Vinci. It is enormous and gloriously hands-on: halls of his machines brought to life, real trains and aeroplanes, and a genuine submarine you can climb through. Older children lose hours here. Little ones might prefer MUBA, the children’s museum at the Rotonda della Besana, which builds its beautiful exhibitions entirely around play.

Over on the other side of the centre, near Porta Venezia, are the Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli, the city’s oldest public gardens: shady paths, playgrounds, and a Natural History Museum with dinosaurs that no child I have ever met could resist. It is the kind of ordinary local park where you see how the city really lives, far from any guidebook.

And then, of course, gelato. In Milan it is less a treat than a daily fact of life, and the rule is simple: follow the queue of locals, walk past the fluorescent tubs piled up like circus tents, and look for the real thing kept in plain covered tins. A cone eaten slowly on a walk is the great Milanese pastime at any age. At dinner, too, your children will be more welcome than you might expect: Italy adores families, no waiter will blink at a small child out at nine in the evening, and a simple plate of pasta will see them treated like little royalty.

If you have the energy for an early evening out, wander down to the Navigli, the old canals in the south of the city, before the crowds gather. Around six the towpaths belong to families and dogs and grandparents, and it is a lovely, gentle hour: a stroll by the water, a slice of pizza or focaccia, and the light turning gold on the canal. There is no need to stay late. The best of it is early.

I promised you beyond the Duomo, and I meant it, but allow me one exception. If you do go, take the children up onto the roof. The lift to the terraces, up among the spires and the statues with the whole city spread out below, is pure magic to a child, and worth every minute of the queue. Then come back down and go and find a park. That, in the end, is my one real piece of advice for Milan with children: see a little, then go and live like a local, slowly, in the green, with a gelato in hand. It is exactly how the city is meant to be enjoyed.