MILAN (Ital. Milano, Ger. Mailand, anc. Mediolanum, q.v.), city, Italy, capital of the province of Milan, 93 m. by rail E.N.E. of Turin. Pop. (1931) 830,188 (town) ; 992,036 (commune). It is the seat of an archbishop, the headquarters of the III. army corps, the chief financial centre of Italy and the wealthiest manu facturing and commercial town in the country. It stands on the little river Olona, near the middle of the Lombard plain, 400 ft above sea-level.
The plain around Milan is extremely fertile, owing to the rich ness of the alluvial soil deposited by the Po, Ticino, Olona and Adda, and to the excellent system of irrigation. From the cathe dral roof, it presents the appearance of a vast garden divided into square plots by rows of mulberry or poplar trees. To the east, this plain stretches in an unbroken level, as far as the eye can follow it, towards Venice and the Adriatic ; on the southern side the line of the Apennines from Bologna to Genoa closes the view ; to the west rise the Maritime Cottian and Graian Alps, with Monte Viso as their central point ; while northward are the Pen nine, Helvetic and Rhaetian Alps, of which Monte Rosa, the Saasgrat and Monte Leone are the most conspicuous features. In the plain itself lie many small villages and here and there a larger town like Monza or Saronno, or a great building like the Certosa of Pavia makes a white point upon the greenery.
The summer is intensely hot, winter very cold, snow is often seen, and the thermometer is frequently below freezing-point.
In shape Milan is a fairly regular polygon (within which the still smaller rectangular nucleus of the Roman city may be recog nized : see MEDIOLANUM), and its focus is the splendid Piazza del Duomo, from which a number of streets radiate in all direc tions, connected by an inner system of streets, constructed just outside the canal which marks the site of the town moat (the arches of Porta Nuova are almost the last trace of the inner cir cuit, constructed after the destruction of the city by Frederick Barbarossa, to which also belonged the Porta dei Fabbri, demol ished in 1900), and by an outer circle of boulevards, just beyond the outer enceinte of the city, erected by the Spaniards in the 16th century. But the city is growing far beyond these, and in 1926
its circumference was about 8 miles.
At one end of the Piazza del Duomo is the cathedral. It is built of brick cased in marble from the quarries which Gian Galeazzo Visconti gave in perpetuity to the cathedral chapter. Begun in 1386, it was then the largest church in existence, and now, after St. Peter's at Rome and the cathedral of Seville, it is the largest church in Europe; it covers an area of 14,000 sq.yd. and can hold 40.000 people. The interior is 486 ft. long, 189 ft. wide; the nave is 157 ft. high, and the distance from the pave ment to the top of the tower is 356 ft. The style is very elabo rate Gothic, but the work was continued through several cen turies and after many designs by many masters, notably by Amadeo, who carried out the octagonal cupola (the pinnacle of which dates from 1774), and by Tibaldi, who laid down the pavement and designed a baroque façade, begun after his death in 1609, but only completed, by Napoleon's orders, in 1805-13. The church is cruciform, with double aisles to the nave and aisles to the transepts. The roof is supported by fifty-two pillars with canopied niches for statues instead of capitals; the great windows of the choir have stained glass of 1844. To the right of the entrance is the tomb of Archbishop Aribert while beside him rests Archbishop Otto Visconti (1295). In a crypt under the choir lies the body of the cardinal saint Carlo Borromeo, who consecrated the cathedral in 1577. It is contained in a rock crystal shrine, encased in silver, and is vested in magnificent robes blazing with jewels. The roof of the cathedral is built of blocks of marble, and the various levels are reached by staircases carried up the buttresses; it is ornamented with a profusion of turrets, pinnacles and statues, of which last there are 4,44o, of various styles and periods.