A short cobbled alley running off the Naviglio Grande that preserves Milan's last public washhouse — the lavatoio, a long covered stone basin fed by a side channel of the canal where washerwomen scrubbed the city's linen well into the 20th century. The wooden roof, the sloping stone boards, and the channel of running water are all still in place.
Unusually for Milan's washing trade, the lavandai here were mostly men, organised into a confraternity that took Saint Anthony of Padua as its patron. The alley is now lined with a couple of trattorie and is one of the most photographed corners of the Navigli — touristy, certainly, but a genuine fragment of the working canal city that has otherwise vanished. It takes five minutes to see; combine it with a walk along the towpath.