The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is the world’s most beautiful shortcut: Duomo to La Scala under a glass-and-iron roof, air ten degrees cooler than the piazza. But it’s just the flagship of a portico system that runs discontinuously across the whole centro — Corso Vittorio Emanuele’s arcades, the Brera colonnades, the fashion district’s deep awning line.
These picks chain the covered segments. August Milan is brutally hot and the city half-empties for a reason; the porticoes are how the remaining half gets around.