Milan does not try to charm you, and that is part of its charm. It is Italy's business capital, a city of fashion, finance and design that works hard and dresses well. At the centre stands the Duomo, a Gothic cathedral begun in 1386 and not finished for about five centuries, a forest of white marble spires and statues, and you can climb onto the roof among them. Beside it, the glass-roofed Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a nineteenth-century shopping arcade, and beyond it La Scala opera house.
In the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper in the 1490s, and booking is essential if you want to see it. In the south, the Navigli canals, partly designed by Leonardo's era engineers, now line with bars and restaurants, and the city's aperitivo tradition, a drink with a spread of snacks, is at its best here. The yellow trams of the old city rattle along rails that are treacherous for motorbike wheels, especially in the wet.
South of the city lies the abbey of Chiaravalle, a Cistercian foundation from the twelfth century with a tall tower, standing in the fields at the edge of the suburbs, a peaceful contrast. The ride to the Venetian walls of Bergamo, built in the sixteenth century, leads north-east across the Lombard plain, where fog can hang thick in autumn and winter, then up into the foothills of the Alps. The roads are busy, so go early on a weekday, and be ready for a mix of motorway and small country roads.
Fuel is easy across the region, with plenty of stations on the ring roads, and bike parking is common in the centre, though the old core has traffic limits that you need to check. Try risotto alla milanese, golden with saffron, and ossobuco, braised veal shank, and finish with a slice of panettone, which comes from here. The city is quietest in August, when many locals leave for the sea, and liveliest in spring and autumn.