Two Museums, Two Milanos

I gave myself one afternoon and two museums, which is either greedy or efficient depending on who you ask. Pinacoteca di Brera in the morning, Fondazione Prada after a long lunch — two versions of Milano sitting on opposite ends of the city and, somehow, opposite ends of time.

Brera is hushed and gilded. Room after room of Italian masters, the Mantegna lying in impossible foreshortening, Raphael's wedding, Caravaggio's supper. The light is warm, the floors creak politely, and you find yourself whispering even when no one asked you to.

Fondazione Prada is the opposite kind of quiet. Rem Koolhaas turned a 1910s distillery into a campus of concrete, gold leaf and glass — sharp angles, brave colours, and contemporary art that argues with the architecture as much as with you. I sat in the gold-clad Haunted House for far too long and didn't mind.

Together they make the case for Milano better than any guidebook: a city that keeps its old masters in beautiful rooms, and gives its new ones a former gin factory to play in.