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Italy's most expensive city for renting and buying a home, with central rents far above Rome. Eating out, services and leisure cost more than the national average; public transport and groceries stay in line. Savings come in the outer districts served by the metro and the first-ring municipalities.

Case di ringhiera and early-20th-century low-rises, 1950s–60s blocks, some public housing; small units and prices still below the city average but rising. Outside Area C, inside Area B; blue-bay parking with resident permits.

Covered municipal market on viale Monza, shops of every community on via Padova and viale Monza, weekly markets in the Comune list. Parco Trotter (open outside school hours) and the Martesana for green space; Crescenzago and Venezia libraries.

112 is the single emergency number; 113, 115 and 118 remain active. Low violent crime, frequent pickpocketing and tourist scams in big cities. Civil Protection weather and seismic alerts and IT-alert messages on mobile phones.

Rules depend on who is arriving: EU/EEA/Swiss citizens (no visa, registration with the Comune after three months), non-EU citizens for stays up to 90 days (Schengen rule, type C visa where required) and for long stays (national type D visa and a residence permit within eight working days of arrival).

M1 with Loreto (also M2), Pasteur, Rovereto and Turro along viale Monza; tram 1 from piazza Morbegno to Centrale and the centre; bus 56 along via Padova. Centrale minutes away, Duomo direct on M1.

Planning is the job of ATS Città Metropolitana di Milano (corso Italia 52); care is delivered by the city's ASSTs and IRCCS institutes. Among the large public hospitals: the Niguarda (piazza Ospedale Maggiore 3), the Policlinico–Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda (via Francesco Sforza 28) and the San Paolo and San Carlo hospitals of ASST Santi Paolo e Carlo.

Italy's largest and most dynamic job market: finance and insurance, consulting, fashion and luxury, design, media and advertising, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, ICT and startups, fairs. Regional employment rates among the highest in the country. Business districts at Porta Nuova, CityLife, the centre and MIND; coworking in every district.

Italy's largest university hub: Politecnico (engineering, architecture, design), Statale, Bicocca, Bocconi (economics, law, political science), Cattolica, IULM, San Raffaele and Humanitas for medicine, Brera and the Conservatory, plus the fashion and design schools. The English-taught offer is the widest in the country. Student support is managed by each university; housing is the main problem.

Humid Po-plain climate: grey, cold winters with temperature inversions (fog is less frequent than it used to be), hot muggy summers with a strong heat island. Milan is consistently among the Italian provincial capitals with the most days above the PM10 limit; ARPA Lombardia publishes the data and regional and municipal anti-smog measures (Area B) apply.

A country of strong local identities: dialects still spoken at home, cuisines and festivals that differ from region to region. Formality with 'Lei', rigid meal times, slow paper-based bureaucracy. Non-EU citizens with a long-stay permit sign an integration agreement with credits.