Milan's design district, a wedge of former factories and warehouses just south of the Porta Genova station that has reinvented itself as the city's creative engine. Through most of the 20th century this was hard industrial ground — the General Electric works, the Ansaldo plant, printing houses and studios. As the factories closed, photographers, designers, and fashion houses moved into the cheap industrial spaces, and the area became the unofficial headquarters of Milanese design.
Via Tortona is the spine, with showrooms, photographic studios, and the Armani/Silos, Giorgio Armani's private museum of his own work in a converted granary. The Mudec, the city's museum of cultures, occupies another reclaimed factory nearby, and the BASE Milano cultural centre runs exhibitions and events in the old Ansaldo workshops. During the Salone del Mobile furniture fair each April, the entire district becomes the Fuorisalone — the off-site programme of installations and parties that takes over every available courtyard and warehouse.
Outside fair season it is quieter, a place of studios and design-conscious cafes rather than crowds. Come for the Armani/Silos and the Mudec, and to see how Milan recycles its industrial past into its creative present.