Милано

Milano is where opera keeps its supreme court. La Scala — Piermarini's theatre of 1778 — remains the stage on which reputations are ratified: Verdi's premieres, Toscanini's reigns, Callas's legend all passed through this red-and-gold room, and its December season opening is still Italian culture's high holiday, the loggione's judgement as feared as ever. The house's museum, its academy and the Filarmonica della Scala extend the institution; Verdi himself presides from the Casa di Riposo he founded — the retirement home for musicians where he chose to be buried, calling it his finest work — while the Conservatorio that once rejected the young Verdi now bears his name with municipal irony.

Around the temple, the metropolis: the Duomo's marble forest and its roof-walk among spires; Leonardo's Last Supper fading magnificently in Santa Maria delle Grazie; the Brera's picture galleries and the Poldi Pezzoli's connoisseurship; the Galleria's glass-roofed salon connecting cathedral to opera house in one gilded stride. Modern Milan added its own skylines — fashion's global capital, design's Salone, the Bosco Verticale's planted towers — a working city whose aperitivo hour is a civic sacrament.

Navigli canals, San Siro's roar, panettone at Christmas: the register runs long. But the essential Milan fits in one address — the world's most consequential opera house, still in session.