Milan (Milano; Lombard: Milan ) is one of the largest cities in Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy, and is one of the most highly developed urban centres in Europe. The city proper (Comune di Milano) has a population of 1,308,735 inhabitants (2004). The population of the urban area (Greater Milan, La Grande Milano), comprising the core of Lombardy, is estimated as of 2006 to be 5,221,228 people. Finally, the official population of the Milan Metropolitan area counts over 7,000,000 residents, the largest in Italy, reaching Como, Lecco, and Varese.
The municipal border wraps a relatively small area (about one-eighth that of Rome) because of the historical development of high density centres in agriculturally rich Lombardy. The urban agglomoration centred around Milan, however, extends well beyond and includes some Swiss territories in southern Canton Ticino: this does not imply any kind of administrative unity, however.
Milan is considered an "alpha" world full service city in the GaWc inventory. The city is one of the world's major commercial and financial centres, and is among the most affluent cities in the European Union.
Milan is also renown as one of the world capitals of design and fashion. Indeed the English word milliner is derived from the name of the city. The Lombard metropolis is famous for its fashion houses and shops (such as along via Montenapoleone) and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in the Piazza Duomo, reputed to be the world's oldest shopping mall).
The city hosted the World Exposition in 1906 and has submitted a bid to BIE to host the Universal Expo in 2015.
Inhabitants of Milan are referred to as "Milanese" (Italian: Milanesi or informally Meneghini or Ambrosiani).
History
Ref:
The decline and fall (Edward Gibbon)
The later roman empire (jones), Blackwell and Mott, Oxford
Milano romana / Mario Mirabella Roberti (Rusconi publisher) 1984
Marchesi, i percorsi della Storia Minerva Italica (It)
Acts of international convention "Milan Capital"), Convegno archeologico internazionale Milano capitale dell'impero romano Altri autori: Sena Chiesa, Gemma Arslan, Ermanno A.
Milano tra l'eta repubblicana e l'eta augustea : atti del Convegno di studi, 26-27 marzo 1999, Milano
Milano capitale dell'impero romano : 286-402 d.c. - (Milano) : Silvana, (1990). - 533 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.
Milano capitale dell'Impero romano : 286-402 d.C. : album storico archeologico. - Milano : Cariplo : ET, 1991. - 111 p. : ill. ; 47 cm. ((Pubbl. in occasione della Mostra tenuta a Milano nel 1990.
Agostino a Milano: il battesimo : Agostino nelle terre di Ambrogio : 22-24 aprile 1987 / (relazioni di) Marta Sordi ... (et al.) Augustinus publ.
Anselmo, conte di Rosate : istoria milanese al tempo del Barbarossa / Pietro Beneventi , Europia publ.
Around 400 BC, the Celtic Insubres inhabited Milan and the surrounding region. In 222 BC, the Romans conquered this settlement, which had the name Mediolanum.
After several centuries of Roman control, Milan was declared the capital of the Western Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian in A.D. 293. Diocletian choosed to stay in the Eastern Roman Empire (capital Nicomedia) and his colleague Maximianus)the Western one. Immediately Maximinian built a gigantic monuments, like an large circus (470 x 85 meters), the Thermae Erculee, an large complex of imperial palaces and several other services and buildings.
In the Edict of Milan of 313, Emperor Constantine I guaranteed freedom of religion for Christians. The city was besieged by the Visigoths in 402, and the imperial residence was moved to Ravenna. Fifty years later (in 452), the Huns overran the city. In 539, the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan in the course of the so-called Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. Milan became part of the Frankish Empire in 774. Subsequently it was part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Ref:
The decline and fall (Edward Gibbon)
The later roman empire (jones), Blackwell and Mott, Oxford
Milano romana / Mario Mirabella Roberti (Rusconi publisher) 1984
Marchesi, i percorsi della Storia Minerva Italica (It)
Acts of international convention "Milan Capital"), Convegno archeologico internazionale Milano capitale dell'impero romano Altri autori: Sena Chiesa, Gemma Arslan, Ermanno A.
Milano tra l'eta repubblicana e l'eta augustea : atti del Convegno di studi, 26-27 marzo 1999, Milano
Milano capitale dell'impero romano : 286-402 d.c. - (Milano) : Silvana, (1990). - 533 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.
Milano capitale dell'Impero romano : 286-402 d.C. : album storico archeologico. - Milano : Cariplo : ET, 1991. - 111 p. : ill. ; 47 cm. ((Pubbl. in occasione della Mostra tenuta a Milano nel 1990.
Agostino a Milano: il battesimo : Agostino nelle terre di Ambrogio : 22-24 aprile 1987 / (relazioni di) Marta Sordi ... (et al.) Augustinus publ.
Anselmo, conte di Rosate : istoria milanese al tempo del Barbarossa / Pietro Beneventi , Europia publ.
During the Middle Ages, Milan prospered as a centre of trade due to its command of the rich plain of the Po and routes from Italy across the Alps. The war of conquest by Frederick I Barbarossa against the Lombard cities brought the destruction of much of Milan in 1162. After the founding of the Lombard League in 1167, Milan took the leading role in this alliance. As a result of the independence that the Lombard cities gained in the Peace of Constance in 1183, Milan became a duchy. In 1395, Gian Galeazzo Visconti became duke of Milan. In 1450, Milan passed to the noble House of Sforza, which made Milan one of the leading cities of the Italian Renaissance.
The French king Louis XII first laid claim to the duchy in 1492. At that time, Milan was defended by Swiss mercenaries. After Louis’ victory over the Swiss at the Battle of Marignano, the duchy was promised to the French king Francis I. When the Habsburg Charles V defeated Francis I at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, northern Italy, including Milan, passed to the House of Habsburg. In 1556, Charles V abdicated in favour of his son Philip II and his brother Ferdinand I. Charles’s Italian possessions, including Milan, passed to Philip II and the Spanish line of Habsburgs, while Ferdinand’s Austrian line of Habsburgs ruled the Holy Roman Empire.
However, in 1700 the Spanish line of Habsburgs was extinguished with the death of Charles II. After his death, the War of the Spanish Succession began in 1701 with the occupation of all Spanish possessions by French troops backing the claim of the French Philippe of Anjou to the Spanish throne. In 1704, the French were defeated in Ramillies and Turin and were forced to yield northern Italy to the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht formally confirmed Austrian sovereignty over most of Spain’s Italian possessions including Lombardy and its capital, Milan.
Napoleon conquered Lombardy in 1796, was crowned "king of Italy" in the Duomo, and Milan was declared capital of the Cisalpine Republic. Once Napoleon’s occupation ended, the Congress of Vienna returned Lombardy, and Milan, along with the Veneto, to Austrian control in 1815.
During this period, Milan became a centre of lyric opera. Here Mozart wrote three operas, and in few years La Scala got the reference theatre in the word, with his premieres of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi. Verdi himself is now tumulated in a precious Institute, the "Casa di Riposo per Musicisti", the Verdi's present to Milan. On the XIX century other important theatres was La Cannobiana and the Teatro Carcano.
On March 18, 1848, the Milanese rebelled against Austrian rule, and Field Marshall Radetzky was forced to withdraw from the city temporarily. However, after defeating Italian forces at Custoza on July 24, Radetzky was able to reassert Austrian control over Milan and northern Italy. However, Italian nationalists, championed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, called for the removal of Austria in the interest of Italian unification. Sardinia and France formed an alliance and defeated Austria at the Battle of Solferino in 1859. Following this battle, Milan and the rest of Lombardy were incorporated into the Kingdom of Sardinia, which soon gained control of most of Italy and in 1861 was rechristened as the Kingdom of Italy.
The political unification of Italy cemented Milan’s commercial dominance over northern Italy. It also led to a flurry of railway construction that made Milan the rail hub of northern Italy. Rapid industrialization put Milan at the centre of Italy’s leading industrial region. Meanwhile, as Milanese banks dominated Italy’s financial sphere, the city became the country’s leading financial centre. Milan’s economic growth brought a rapid expansion in the city’s area and population during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1919, Benito Mussolini organized the Blackshirts, who formed the core of Italy’s Fascist movement, in Milan. In 1922, Mussolini started his March on Rome from Milan. Milan suffered severe damage from British and American carpet bombings especially in 1944 during World War II.
During the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of Italians, particularly from southern Italy, moved to Milan to seek jobs within the city’s rapidly expanding economy. However, between 1971 and 2001, Milan’s population dropped from a high of 1,723,000 to 1,256,000. Most of this population was lost to the belt of new suburbs and small cities surrounding Milan, where many moved to escape Milan’s high housing costs. Nonetheless, Milan’s population seems to have stabilized, and there has been a slight increase in the population of the city since 2001.
Name
Milan's name is believed by some to derive from the Celtic Medelhan, meaning "in the middle of the plain", due either to its location in a plain close to the confluence of two small rivers, the Olona and the Seveso, or perhaps to its being close to, and roughly equidistant from, two major rivers, the Ticino and the Adda. The Romans transcribed the name as Mediolanum, which in Latin could also be interpreted as meaning "wool in the middle". Thus arose the legend, built on Celtic lore about the boar as a mythical animal: according to a prophecy the site for the settlement would have been indicated to a Celtic king by the appearance of a wild pig or boar with a ridge of hair along its back, as reported by Cardano around 1626:
:Nel fabricar de le superbe mura
:De la prima Città ch'abbian gl'Insubri
:Uscì da i fondamenti un gran Cinghiale,
:Mezzo di pel setoso, e mezzo ignudo,
:Onde MILAN chiamossi
:Da gli Hedui, o Borgognoni, o pur da i Franchi,
:Da cui l'origine hebbe,
:Che altri di MEZZA LANA dir potrebbe
Translated:
:While building the majestic walls
:Of the first Town the Insubres have
:From the foundation a big boar came
:Half silky with hair, and half bare
:Hence it was called MILAN
:By the Aedui, the Burgundians or the Franks,
:And from this had its origin
:What others could call HALF WOOL
Today the boar is still sometimes used as a symbol of the city. According to another explanation, Mediolanum comes from a corruption of In medio lanorum meaning between the rivers - actually Milan still includes the two small Olona and Seveso rivers.
The German name for the city is Mailand, while in the local Western Lombard dialect, the city's name is Milán, similar to the French.
Demography
The Province of Milan (reputed to be dissolved into a "Metropolitan City", a new administrative unit not yet implemented) lies in the western part of Lombardy. It covers an area of 1,981 square kilometers and has a population of 3,839,216 (2005). In 1991, the population was 3,738,685. The province comprises 188 "comunes", ranging in population (2001) from 1,308,311 (Milan) to 638 (Nosate). between 1991 to 2001, the city of Milan has lost 113,084 inhabitants (8.3 percent) mostly due to suburban sprawl and expulsion of population from the inner city centre, which is now almost fully dedicated to offices and commerce. In November 2006, the official population of the Milan Metro Area, in an area of more than 9,000 square kilometers, was certificated for the first time, counting 7.4 million residents.
Like many cities in northern Italy, the population is aging rapidly. In 2005, 14.44 percent of the population was under 18, while those over 60 years of age constituted 29.94 percent. Despite this the population of Milano grew 2.11 percent, mostly from migrants from around the world as well as from internal migration within Italy. The city has seen a massive influx of foreigners over the last few decades. Unlike most other Italian cities, the majority of foreigners are from Asia and Africa, rather than Eastern Europe. In total, they comprise 12.47 per cent of the city's total population. The largest groups are from the Philipines (26,459), Egypt (20,904), Peru (13,758), China (12,960), and Ecuador (12,339).
Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification Milan is typically classified as having a Humid subtropical climate (Cfa). In contrast to most of Italy, which is famous for a comfortable Mediterranean climate, Milan's winters are typically damp and chilly, while summers are hot and very humid. Average temperatures are -3/+6°C in January and +15/+28°C in July. Snowfalls are common, sometimes with up to 40 cm (15 in) per year. Humidity is quite high during the whole year and annual precipitation averages about 1000 mm (40 in). In the stereotypical image, the city is often shrouded in the fog characteristic of the Po Basin, although the removal of rice fields from the southern neighbourhoods and the reduction of pollution levels have reduced this phenomenon in recent years.
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Economy
Milan is one of the major financial and business centres of the world. The city is the seat of the Italian Stock Exchange (the Borsa Italiana)"Piazza Affari" and its hinterland is an avant-garde industrial area. Milan was included in a list of ten "Alpha world cities" by Peter J. Taylor and Robert E. Lang of the Brookings Institution in the economic report "U.S. Cities in the 'World City Network'" (Key Findings, ).
Milan is also well known as the seat of the Alfa Romeo motorcar company, for its silk production, and as one of the world's capitals for fashion and a world leader for design.
Milan also provides directional functions for the whole of Lombardy, as its industrial base has been externalized throughout the region in the 1960s-70s.
The Fiera Milano, the city's Exhibition Centre and Trade Fair complex, is notable. This new fairground, in the north-western suburb of Pero and Rho, opened in April 2005, making the Fiera Milano the largest trade fair complex in the world.
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