I have a friend who goes to Italy for 2 or 3 weeks every year, speaks Italian, and studied there in college (I htink he was in Florence) and is a real Italophile. I recently asked him what his favorite place in Italy was, and my jaw dropped when he said Milan. I can't remember his exact reasons, but it had a lot to do with the everyday civic and especially commercial life there. He describes the shops as beautiful, and says that you will find things there that you won't find almost anyplace else in the world.

I didn't have the same experience of Milan, but he's spent a lot more time there than I and I thought that given the trend of this thread, it might be interesting to have a minority opinion.