Milan City Get Aways!

 

City Description

Milan may not have the fine finish of Verona or the floaty fancies of Venice, but it has sophistication by the barrel load. It is a pleasure to wander around the main square with its perfectly impressive cathedral, visit Da Vinci's Last Supper or see La Scala - possibly the finest Opera House in the world.

Milan's role in world fashion design is evident with a vast range of upmarket designer boutiques and expensive department stores. Every pavement is a catwalk - even the police look as though they've just strutted out of the pages of Vogue. Buy something outrageous and you'll fit in effortlessly.

 

 

Another reason to visit Milan is the lakes; Lake Como is only 40 minutes north of the city by train. After a couple of days swanking around town there is nothing better than a day of fresh air strolling throught the fine lakeside villages. Two holidays in one!

Flights to Milan operate on a daily basis with Aer Lingus.

 

If you do one thing in Milan.....

Square - Cathedral Square (Piazza del Duomo)

Theatre - La Scala

Church - San Satiro

Football Pitch - San Siro

 

Etymology

The English name Milan derives from the Lombard and the Italian form is Milano which stems from the Latin Mediolanum, the ancient city founded by the Celtic tribe of the Insubres, that was in possession of the city until the Roman conquest in the 2nd century BC.[citation needed]. The Mediolanum name is borne by a number of Gallo-Roman sites in France, such as Mediolanum Santonum (Saintes) and Mediolanum Aulercorum (Évreux) and appears to contain the Celtic element -lan, signifying an enclosure or demarcated territory (source of the Welsh word 'llan', meaning a sanctuary or church). Hence, Mediolanum could signify the central town or sanctuary of a particular Celtic tribe.[citation needed]

The origin of the name and of a boar (the scrofa semilanuta) as a symbol of the city are fancifully accounted for in Andrea Alciato's Emblemata (1584), beneath a woodcut of the first raising of the city walls, where a boar is seen lifted from the excavation, and the etymology of Mediolanum given as "half-wool", explained in Latin and in French. The foundation of Milan is credited to two Celtic peoples, the Bituriges and the Aedui, having as their emblems a ram and a boar; therefore "The city's symbol is a wool-bearing boar, an animal of double form, here with sharp bristles, there with sleek wool."Alciato credits Ambrose for his account.

The German name for the city is Mailand, while in the local Western Lombard dialect, the city's name is Milán.