Located on the lush Po plain, and capital of Italy's wealthy northern region of Lombardy, or Lombardia, 2,500-year-old Milan plays host to a glamorous fashion scene as well as what fashionistas call some of the best shopping in the world. It's home to more than 1,100,000 people, Italy's most powerful stock exchange and the Fiera di Milano, the world's largest exhibition centre.

True to form, Milan's iron-and-glass Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II may be the world's first shopping mall. Famed operahouse La Scala still sings more than 200 years after its opening, and da Vinci's faded Last Supper shows the marks of an unsettled history. Milan's gothic Duomo took 500 years to finish, but its graceful details plus a marble facade of 135 spires and some 3,400 statues, are worth every second of the wait.