Places, People & Moments: the Milan spots we love with children

Every family in Milan has its own secret map: the courtyard where you stop for a snack, the Saturday bookshop, the garden that feels as though it belongs to another city. These are the places we hold dear — the ones you won’t find in the guidebooks, passed along like small gifts, from parent to parent.

This is ours: a selection of places, people and moments we love sharing with our children. It isn’t a ranking and it will never be complete — it’s a map of the heart, and maps of the heart keep growing.

In short:

• The Milan places we hold dear with children: Cascina Cuccagna, the Libreria dei Ragazzi children’s bookshop, the Giardini della Guastalla, the BAM park, the Darsena and the Idroscalo in summer.
• Almost all of it is free, or very nearly: courtyards, parks and urban waterfronts.
• Every district has its own character: Porta Romana for farmsteads and gardens, the centre for the great classics, Porta Nuova for modern Milan.
• The map grows with the community: the places we hold dear are passed from parent to parent.

The farmstead in the middle of the city

A short walk from Porta Romana, Cascina Cuccagna is an eighteenth-century cascina — a Lombard courtyard farm — given back to the city: a cobbled yard, vegetable plots, bicycles propped against the walls and tables under the pergola. Saturday, with the farmers’ market, is the loveliest moment of all — the children roam free, the grown-ups fill their bags with vegetables, and a snack turns into lunch.

It’s the place we show friends to say: this is Milan too.

The bookshop where it all begins

La Libreria dei Ragazzi is a gentle institution: the first children’s bookshop in Italy, opened in 1972, where the booksellers have the rare gift of finding the right book for that particular child. You go in for a present and come out with a small library — and with a child convinced that books are a celebration.

The perfect Saturday morning ritual: bookshop, then a bench in the park, and the first page read together.

The gardens you don’t expect

Everyone knows Parco Sempione and the Giardini Montanelli; few know the Giardini della Guastalla, the oldest garden in Milan, with its baroque fish pond and shaded benches behind the Università Statale, the city’s state university. Small, quiet, perfect for a mid-afternoon pause.

At the other end of the city — and of time — comes the BAM, Biblioteca degli Alberi, the “library of trees”, among the skyscrapers of Porta Nuova: geometric lawns, events for families and children running between the birches while vertical Milan watches them from above.

The city’s water

Milan has no sea, but it does have water: the Darsena, the old dock, with its ducks and its covered market for a snack, the Navigli canals in the quiet hours of the morning, and in summer the Idroscalo — the “Milanese seaside” — for a whole day of lawns, playgrounds and pedalos.

For anyone after real water, the kind you picnic beside on a lakeshore, we’ve gathered our favourite spots in our guide to picnics near Milan and in our day trips out of the city.

The classics that never disappoint

Then there are the great classics, the ones that always work: the courtyards of the Castello Sforzesco early in the morning, the little lake in Parco Sempione, the right museums on rainy afternoons. We’ve written about them properly in our one-day itinerary in Milan and in our guide to the museums children adore.

The ice cream ritual

And finally the most democratic moment of them all: ice cream on a summer evening, when the heat loosens its grip and the neighbourhood comes out onto the street. You don’t need the famous gelateria — you need your one, the place where the gelato maker knows the children’s flavours by heart. It’s a moment so much our own that we’ve given it a collection: Summer Evening.

People & moments: the map grows with you

The places we hold dear are made above all of people: the families we meet, the photos that reach us from your weekends, the tips we swap at the market or by message. This page will keep being updated over time, with new places and new stories — if you have a place you hold dear to suggest, write to us: the map is lovelier when we draw it together.

Frequently asked questions

What can you do for free in Milan with children?

A great deal: the courtyards of the Castello, the parks — Sempione, Montanelli, BAM, Guastalla — the Darsena, the window displays in the Galleria arcade and Hangar Bicocca, the contemporary art venue, which is always free. The best of the city is often the part that costs nothing.

Which is the nicest part of Milan to enjoy with children?

Every neighbourhood has its own character: Porta Romana for the farmsteads and gardens, the centre for the great classics, Porta Nuova for a modern Milan built around its lawns. The good thing is that the city is small: twenty minutes on the tram and you’re in another world.

And for a whole weekend, in the city or out of it?

In the city, the one-day itinerary stretches happily over two. Outside it, slow weekends in Lombardy are our answer: lakes, small towns and quiet an hour from home.

In the end, the places we hold dear all share the same recipe: a simple spot, the right people and the time to stay there. Milan adds the rest.