Lombardy Culture & Language

Lombardy's cultural life grew out of commerce, which gives it a particular character: the arts here have usually had a patron, a guild or a market behind them.

Music and opera

La Scala opened in 1778 and remains the centre of Italian opera; its season opens every 7 December, the feast of Sant'Ambrogio, and the date functions as Milan's civic occasion as much as a musical one. Verdi's career was made there. In Cremona, violin-making has continued unbroken since Andrea Amati in the 16th century, through Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù; the craft was added to UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2012, and the workshops are working ones.

Design and fashion

Milan's position rests on manufacturing as much as styling — furniture from Brianza, textiles from Como's silk industry, metalwork from Brescia. The April furniture fair, known locally as the Salone, and the Fashion Weeks in February and September are trade events that the city has learned to open partly to visitors.

Art and architecture

Leonardo's Last Supper, painted 1495-98 on a refectory wall in Santa Maria delle Grazie, survives in fragile condition; numbers are strictly limited. The Brera collection holds Mantegna's Lamentation and Piero della Francesca's Montefeltro Altarpiece. In Mantua, Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi in the Palazzo Ducale is an early and startling exercise in painted illusion.

Language

Italian is universal, but Lombard — a Gallo-Italic language, not a dialect of Italian — persists, split between a western group around Milan and an eastern group around Bergamo and Brescia. Bergamasque in particular remains widely spoken and is difficult for other Italians to follow.

Religion and festivals

Milan keeps the Ambrosian rite, with its own liturgical calendar: Lent begins four days later than in the rest of the Catholic church, and Carnival ends accordingly. December's Oh Bej! Oh Bej! market around Sant'Ambrogio is the city's oldest. In the mountains, the Sacri Monti — chapel sequences laid out on hillsides for pilgrims — are shared with Piedmont on the UNESCO list.

Italian is the working language everywhere. English is widely spoken in Milan and around the lakes, less so in the plain cities and the mountain valleys, where a few phrases go a long way.

• Buongiorno / buonasera — good morning / good evening. Used on entering a shop or bar, and expected.
• Per favore, grazie, prego — please, thank you, you're welcome (also "go ahead").
• Un caffè — an espresso. Anything else needs naming: macchiato, lungo, cappuccino.
• Il conto, per favore — the bill, please. It is not brought unasked.
• Vorrei... — I would like... The usual polite way to order.

Two local notes. Lombard is a separate Gallo-Italic language rather than an accent, and in Bergamo and Brescia it is still spoken daily — visitors will hear it without being expected to follow it. And Milanese use ciao freely among peers but salve or buongiorno with strangers and in shops.