How do I get around Milan?

ATM's metro does the heavy lifting. Four lines. M1 red connects Sesto FS to Rho Fiera, passing through Cadorna and the Duomo interchange. M3 yellow links Milano Centrale to the southern suburbs via Duomo. M2 green runs the northeast-southwest diagonal, hitting Garibaldi FS and Cadorna. The M4 blue line completed its full run to San Cristoforo in 2024 and changed Linate arrivals entirely. 12 minutes from the terminal to San Babila station, right at the eastern edge of the centro storico. A single €2.20 ticket covers 90 minutes across metro, tram, and bus. The 24-hour pass costs €7.60 and tends to pay for itself by mid-afternoon if you're moving between sites. You can tap a contactless Visa or Mastercard directly at the turnstiles, which saves the queue at the ticket machine. Trains run from about 06:00 to 00:30 on weeknights, extending to roughly 01:30 on Fridays and Saturdays.

Milan's trams are half the point. The city still runs orange Peter Witt cars built in 1928 on regular routes. They creak through turns and smell like warm brake dust and old wood on a summer afternoon. Line 1 loops past Castello Sforzesco. Trams reach neighborhoods the metro misses, like the Navigli canal district south of Porta Ticinese and the Corso Buenos Aires shopping strip northeast of Centrale. They move at maybe 15 km/h in traffic, but they stop where you actually want to be. The centro storico is flat and compact on foot. Piazza del Duomo to the Pinacoteca di Brera is a 15-minute walk north through pedestrianized streets. Piazza del Duomo to the Navigli is 25 minutes south. BikeMi docking stations appear every 300-400 meters across the center if you'd rather ride. Watch for tram tracks at crossings. They catch shoe heels and bike tires, and the stone paving in Brera will punish rolling luggage.

White taxis queue at ranks outside Centrale, Cadorna, and the Duomo. Fares are metered at roughly €1.10 per kilometer, with a daytime flagfall of €3.30 that rises to €5.40 after 21:00 and about €6.40 on Sundays. A ride from Centrale to the Duomo runs about €8-10. Uber operates in Milan, but the driver pool is noticeably smaller than in Rome or Barcelona. You might wait 8-12 minutes for a pickup on a Friday evening in Brera. Free Now pulls from the licensed taxi fleet, so availability tends to be better. Worth noting that most Milan taxis now accept cards, though a few drivers still sigh audibly when you tap rather than pay cash.

The biggest first-timer mistake at Malpensa is buying a coach ticket. Buses sit in tangenziale ring-road traffic and the ride can stretch past 75 minutes. The Malpensa Express train from Centrale costs €13 and takes about 50 minutes. From Cadorna the same train runs closer to 37 minutes. Book on the Trenord app before you land. For Bergamo Orio al Serio, used heavily by Ryanair, a coach to Centrale takes about 60 minutes and costs €7-10. After the last metro train, night buses marked with N cover the main corridors on 30-minute headways, but service thins out after 1 AM. A taxi from the Navigli to Porta Garibaldi at 2 AM runs about €12-15.