The shortlist

The coolest neighborhoods in Milan.

This site gives one answer per city. That's the whole point. For Milan, the answer is Isola, and the case is below. But three other neighborhoods pushed hard for the title, and at least one of them could take it before the decade is out. Here's the shortlist, in order.

01

Isola The pick

Isola won on completeness. NoLo has the energy but not the finish. Navigli has the crowds but lost the locals. Porta Romana has the food but goes to bed early. Isola runs everything at once: a listening bar pouring drinks over vinyl (Solchi), a bakery that calls itself radical (Tondo), a photography bookshop (Micamera), a flower shop serving coffee (Fiuri). That density of specific, slightly obsessive small businesses is the tell. Nobody opens a drink d'ascolto in a neighborhood that's coasting. And it all sits within a few blocks of actual creative industry, not the memory of one. Food, design, nightlife, on the same streets, at the same time. Nothing else in Milan does that.

Read the full case for Isola →
02

NoLo

The only real threat to Isola's title. Pakistani bakeries next to old Italian bars, xiaolongbao at Zaoyidian, a risotto menu that rotates daily at Da Abele. Via Pontano runs almost 700 metres of murals. It's cheaper and rawer than Isola, and asking prices have climbed 8 to 18 percent in three years, so the clock is running. What holds it back: the neighborhood is still mid-argument with itself. Around Piazza Morbegno and Parco Trotter it already works. Some stretches near Via Padova don't yet. Check back in five years.

03

Navigli

Navigli peaked, which is not the same as being over. Thursday and Friday nights on the Naviglio Grande are still a spectacle, thousands of people packed along the water. Mag Cafe makes some of the best cocktails in the city, Contraste hands you a tasting menu with no fixed menu, and the last Sunday of every month brings 400 antique vendors down nearly two kilometres of canal. But the case di ringhiera, built for laundry workers, are now among Milan's priciest apartments, and the weekend crowd skews tourist. A great night out. Not the coolest neighborhood.

04

Porta Romana

Possibly the best food of the four. Trippa is the hardest table in Milan, gone the week reservations open. Dongio, Pasta Madre, and Un Posto a Milano hold the line around it, and Teatro Carcano keeps something running after dinner. The problem is tempo. This is a neighborhood that eats lunch at noon and means it. Watch the southern edge, though. Scalo Romana, the old rail yard, becomes the Olympic Village for the Winter Games, and that will change this place faster than the nonni expect. If Porta Romana wakes up, the ranking gets interesting.

No juries, no sponsors. How we pick explains the rules; Isola is where they landed.

Last updated