Your travel guide to Milan, Italy

Your travel guide to Milan, Italy

Milano Centrale

Milano Centrale station

Facts Milano Centrale

  • The facade is 200 meters wide
  • Used by 330 000 passengers/day
  • About 500 trains a day
  • 120 million passengers per year
  • The station has 24 tracks

    • Milano Centrale (Stazione Milano Centrale) is just as it sounds the central station of the city of Milan. It is the largest railway station in Europe by volume. The station is a terminus and is located in the northern part of central Milan. It was officially inaugurated in 1931 to replace the old central station (built in 1864).

    The city had simply outgrown the 1864 station designed by French architect Louis-Jules Bouchot, in a style similar to buildings in Paris during the same period. There is no trace of that station left.

    The history of Milano Centrale

    Milano Centrale stationItalian King Victor Emmanuel III laid the foundation stone for the new station in April 1906. It also took time to get an architect ready before architect Ulisse Stacchini won the competition in 1912. The style was an eclectic mix called 'Assyrian-Lombard' and was based on Washington Union Station in Washington DC.

    Due to the Italian economic crisis during the First World War, construction proceeded very slowly, and the project, simply at the beginning, still changed and became increasingly complex and majestic.

    This happened especially when Benito ("I made the trains run on time") Mussolini became the new Prime Minister. As he wanted the station to represent the power of the fascist regime. The changes were new types of platforms and the construction of new large steel roofs by Alberto Fava.

    Today, the station is 341 m long and covers an area of 66 500 square meters. Construction resumed in 1925 and was completed on July 1, 1931.

    Modern connections

    The central station links Turin, Venice via Verona, Bologna, Rome, Naples and Salerno with high-speed connections. Railway lines Simplon and Gotthard connect Milan's center to Bern and Geneva via Domodossola and Zurich via Chiasso in Switzerland.

    Destinations to smaller cities, using regular fast trains, include Ventimiglia (on the border with France), Genoa, Turin, Tirano, Bergamo, Verona, Mantova, Bologna and La Spezia.

    The station is also connected to Malpensa Airport by train to Malpensa Express Airport.

    Daily international connections include Bern, Lugano, Geneva, Zurich, Paris, Vienna, Marseille and Munich.