A Summer in Milan

Milan in August is a rumour. Everyone tells you the city empties, that the good restaurants shutter, that the only people left are tourists photographing a cathedral in forty degrees. Some of that is true. What nobody mentions is that an empty Milan is the best Milan there is, and that the ones who stay know exactly what they are doing.

Here is what we have learned, mostly the hard way.

Book the aperitivo, not the dinner

The city runs on the hour between seven and eight. Bar Basso still pours the Negroni Sbagliato that launched a thousand imitations, and it is worth the pilgrimage once. After that, go to Nottingham Forest if you want theatre, or sit outside at Bar Luce in Fondazione Prada if you want to be looked at, which is a perfectly respectable reason to choose a bar. Order first, then decide where you are eating. Milan rewards people who improvise after the second drink.

Dress for marble, not for beach

Milanese summer style is not resort. It is city dressing with the sleeves removed. Linen that has been pressed. A slip dress in a colour that is almost a neutral but not quite. Flat sandals that can handle cobbles in Brera without becoming a story. The rule is simple: one strong thing, everything else quiet. If the dress is doing the talking, the jewellery listens. If the dress is a plain white shirt and good trousers, the earrings become the entire outfit, and that is the version we prefer.

Go where the city goes in August

The locals leave for the lakes on Friday and most of them are not lying about it. Como is beautiful and busy. Iseo is beautiful and is not. An hour and ten minutes on the train from Centrale and you are somewhere with better swimming and half the boat traffic. Take the earrings you can sleep in.

The gallery nobody queues for

Everyone does the Duomo. Fewer people do Museo Poldi Pezzoli, which is a private house full of extraordinary things, cool in every sense, and rarely crowded in August. Twenty minutes there resets an afternoon.

The unglamorous tip that changes everything

Nothing opens on Sunday afternoon and half of it closes for two weeks around Ferragosto. Check before you walk. A Milanese friend once told us that the difference between a good visitor and a bad one is that the good one calls ahead, and she has never been wrong about anything else either.

What we would pack

Three things, and only three. Something gold that does not mind chlorine. One pair of earrings sculptural enough to carry a bare neckline. And a necklace you can wear over a shirt at lunch and under nothing at all by nine. If you own those, you have packed for Milan, Iseo, and whatever happens between them.

See you at Bar Basso. We will be the ones outside.