Milan's newest skyline, a business district built almost from scratch over the 2000s and 2010s on former railway land between the old centre and Milano Centrale station. Where there were sidings and derelict yards there is now a cluster of glass towers, raised plazas, and one of the most photographed buildings in Europe, all wrapped around the elevated Piazza Gae Aulenti.
The landmark is the Bosco Verticale, Stefano Boeri's pair of residential towers planted with some 900 trees on their balconies — a working experiment in vertical forestry that has been copied worldwide. Beside it the UniCredit Tower, Italy's tallest building, spirals up from Piazza Gae Aulenti, a circular raised square ringed with cafes and reflecting pools. The Biblioteca degli Alberi park stitches the development to the older neighbourhoods of Isola and Garibaldi. Near the station, the Shoah Memorial occupies the platform from which Milan's Jews were deported.
It is a deliberately contemporary quarter — clean lines, chain restaurants, after-work crowds — and feels different in kind from the rest of central Milan. Come at dusk, when the towers light up and the plaza fills, for the best of it.