Is Milan safe?

Piazza del Duomo is where most visitors to Milan lose money, so start there. Men near the cathedral steps press dried corn into your palm for the pigeons or loop a cotton bracelet around your wrist, then ask for €5 to €20; keep both hands in your pockets as you cross the square and say "no, grazie" without slowing. The same bracelet crews also work the Via Dante approach to Sforza Castle. In October the piazza smells of chestnuts roasting on the street carts, and the knot of people around each cart is where a phone seems to leave a back pocket. We rate these hustles as an irritation, not a danger, but a solo traveller has nobody to wave the man off, so the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade on the north side makes a calmer route to La Scala.

Milano Centrale is the bigger problem. Unofficial helpers hover at the Trenitalia ticket machines, offer to press the buttons, and keep your change or watch your PIN. The escalators down to Metro M2 and M3 are long, slow, and crowded, and teams of two or three tend to board with you there. Theft on M1 seems heaviest between Duomo and Cadorna, where the carriages are hot and packed shoulder to shoulder by 8:30 on weekdays, so wear the daypack on your chest and zip the phone inside it. We'd put Centrale level with Rome's Termini for pickpocket risk and well below it for menace. The metro currently stops at about half past midnight; after that, ATM night buses follow the M1, M2 and M3 routes, and white licensed taxis wait at ranks such as Piazza Duca d'Aosta. Tram 1 still runs 1920s cars with varnished wooden benches, and it rattles past La Scala loudly enough to cover a zip being opened.

After dark in Milan, where you sleep matters more than what you carry. Brera, Porta Venezia and Isola stay busy with diners until around midnight, and solo women tend to report them as comfortable on foot. The blocks east of Centrale around Via Benedetto Marcello feel different after 23:00, with drug dealing and groups of men loitering, so pay the extra for a room elsewhere. Skip Parco Sempione once the light goes. Via Padova north of Piazzale Loreto, Corvetto, the Rogoredo station area and Piazzale Selinunte in San Siro have nothing a visitor needs at night. Navigli is a mixed case: on Friday and Saturday after 1am, the towpath along Ripa di Porta Ticinese is sticky with spilled spritz and crunchy with broken glass, and phone and necklace snatches are reported there and at the Colonne di San Lorenzo. Our view is that Navigli is fine until midnight and a taxi job after it.

Eating alone is easy in Milan, which helps with safety because you are never the odd one out. Aperitivo runs from about 18:00 to 21:00, and a €10 to €15 Negroni Sbagliato at a bar counter in Porta Venezia or Isola comes with enough food to count as dinner for one. A small-group walking tour on your first morning gives you company and a guide who will point out the hustlers at the cathedral before they reach you. Tuesday afternoon's reading was 19.2°C under a clear sky, so the 20-minute walk from Brera to Isola is warm enough in a light jacket. Dial 112 for police, ambulance or fire, and ask for an English-speaking operator; if something is stolen, file a denuncia at the Questura on Via Fatebenefratelli, because travel insurers will usually ask for that report before paying a claim.