Milan Christmas Market

Milan celebrates Christmas in two stages. The Christmas market on piazza del Duomo, with its wooden chalets lined up along the flanks of the cathedral, runs all through December until Epiphany; the Oh Bej! Oh Bej! fair, meanwhile, lasts only four days around 7 December, the feast of Saint Ambrose, the city’s patron, and has circled the Castello Sforzesco since 2006. Milan Christmas market is therefore visited with a calendar in mind: the Lombard capital, Italy’s second city with 1.36 million inhabitants, is linked to Paris by direct trains in about seven hours and by three airports, which makes it the simplest gateway to the Italian markets. The piazza del Duomo tree, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II dressed in lights and the windows of via Montenapoleone add a big-city backdrop that no Alpine market can offer.

Milan Christmas market around the Duomo

The chalets form a line along the perimeter of the cathedral, on the north side of the square and towards piazzetta Reale. In 2025 they were open from 1 December to 6 January, daily from 9am to 9pm, with stalls of sweets and cured meats, textiles and clothing, crafts and cosmetics. A Santa’s grotto for children and a life-size nativity scene completed the set-up, according to the YesMilano tourist office website. The city council counted 78 wooden chalets in 2025 in its “Natale a Milano” programme; this is a medium-sized market, covered in an hour, whose appeal lies as much in the address as in the stalls.

The piazza del Duomo tree is the other draw. For winter 2025 the city council had chosen a 29-metre spruce from Dimaro Folgarida, in Trentino, decorated with 100,000 micro-LEDs in the colours of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games, lit on Saturday 6 December at 6pm, the eve of Sant’Ambrogio. Around it, a Christmas village powered by renewable energy and over thirty light installations spread across the districts, until 6 January. The 2026 programme will be presented by the city council in late autumn, as every year; the tree and the lighting date change from one edition to the next depending on the sponsor.

Oh Bej! Oh Bej!, the Sant’Ambrogio fair

The Oh Bej! Oh Bej! fair is the city’s oldest Christmas event. Tradition dates it back to 1510, when Giannetto Castiglione, a papal envoy, is said to have entered Milan with his arms full of boxes of sweets and toys for the children, who supposedly shouted “oh bej, oh bej” (“how lovely”) in Milanese dialect. The fair was held on piazza Mercanti until 1886, then around the basilica of Sant’Ambrogio for a hundred and twenty years, before spreading in 2006 to the avenues surrounding the Castello Sforzesco, Cairoli metro station. In 2025 it occupied the days from 5 to 8 December, Sant’Ambrogio being followed by the public holiday of the Immaculate Conception, which gives the Milanese a long weekend to drop by.

People come for the antiques and bric-a-brac stalls, the toys, the books, the honey and the sweets, and for the firunatt (or firòn), that skewer of roasted chestnuts threaded on a string, sold like a necklace and eaten while walking. Mulled wine, called vin brulé, is served by the cup along the castle moat; if you want to know how it differs from the Alsatian version, we have put the recipes side by side in mulled wine and its variations. Panettone, the brioche-style bread with raisins and candied citrus peel whose origin Milan claims, is everywhere at this time of year: legend attributes its invention to a kitchen boy named Toni at the Sforza court, and the pastry chef Angelo Motta gave it its tall domed shape in 1919. A Milanese custom holds that you keep a slice until 3 February, Saint Blaise’s day, against sore throats.

Milan’s other Christmas markets

The Villaggio delle Meraviglie, in the Indro Montanelli gardens near Porta Venezia, is presented by the national tourist board as Milan’s first theme park devoted to Christmas, with free entry: Santa’s house, elves’ market, ice rink, street-food stalls (panini, churros, polenta, roasted chestnuts) and gifts. In 2025 it was open from 15 November to 6 January, Palestro or Porta Venezia stations. The Banco di Garabombo, on the piazzetta of via Mario Pagano, is a fair-trade market under a big marquee, open from 31 October to 6 January in 2025, from 9am to 8pm. L’Artigiano in Fiera, the craft fair held at the Rho exhibition centre in early December, also attracts those looking for handmade gifts, with hundreds of Italian and foreign exhibitors.

Dates, opening hours and practical information for 2026

The dates of the 2026 edition of Milan Christmas market have not yet been published, either for piazza del Duomo or for the Oh Bej! Oh Bej! fair. The latter follows a fixed calendar around 7 December: in 2026 Sant’Ambrogio falls on a Monday, so the fair should cover the weekend of 5 to 8 December, but wait for confirmation from the city council before booking. The Duomo market opened on 1 December in 2025 and closed on 6 January.

• Where: piazza del Duomo for the main market (metro M1 or M3, Duomo station); Castello Sforzesco for Oh Bej! Oh Bej! (M1, Cairoli station); Montanelli gardens for the Villaggio delle Meraviglie.
• When: 2026 dates to be confirmed. In 2025, Duomo market from 1 December to 6 January from 9am to 9pm, Oh Bej! Oh Bej! fair from 5 to 8 December.
• How much: free entry to all the markets; allow €15 to €40 per person for an artisan panettone, a firunatt, a vin brulé and a turn on the ice rink.
• Parking: the centre is subject to a paid limited traffic zone (Area C); leave the car in a park-and-ride at the end of a metro line and reach the Duomo in a quarter of an hour.
• Nearby: Castione della Presolana Christmas market, in the Bergamo mountains, is a day trip by car; Verona Christmas market and the one in Turin are on the two rail routes out of Milano Centrale.

Piazza del Duomo is flat and open, the chalets are wheelchair-accessible, but the crowds on December weekends are dense and the organiser gives no information on the accessibility of the stalls. The gravel avenues of the Castello Sforzesco are less comfortable with a pushchair.

Getting to Milan from France

Milan is the easiest Italian city to reach by train from Paris. SNCF’s TGVs and Trenitalia’s Frecciarossas have run direct via Turin since spring 2025, three TGVs and two Frecciarossas a day, in about seven hours to Milano Centrale according to seat61, which flags a break for works in the Mont Cenis tunnel from 11 September to 9 October 2026, before the markets open. The line was closed for two years after the landslide of August 2023 in the Maurienne: check the state of the service when you book. From Lyon and Chambéry, you board the same trains along the way. From the Côte d’Azur, regional trains Nice-Ventimiglia then Ventimiglia-Genoa-Milan make a day’s journey with two changes. From Zurich or Geneva, the Swiss EuroCity trains also arrive at Milano Centrale, from where metro M3 takes you to the Duomo in a few stops.

By air, Milan has three airports: Malpensa, linked to Centrale by the Malpensa Express, Linate, at the end of metro line M4, and Bergamo Orio al Serio, served by low-cost airlines and by buses to the central station. Direct flights leave from Paris and several French cities, depending on the season. By car, you take the Mont Blanc or Fréjus tunnel (toll), then the A5 or A32 and the A4 to Milan, on toll motorways; it is a long day from Paris, half a day from Lyon or Geneva.

Milan in December: the Duomo, the Last Supper and the Navigli

The Duomo, begun in 1386, can be visited right up to its terraces, from where you see the marble spires and, on a clear day, the snow-capped Alps. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan’s “drawing room”, links the square to La Scala under its glass roof; in December it hosts its own tree and the windows of the great fashion houses. The Castello Sforzesco, a 15th-century fortress, houses several museums, including Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà, and its courtyards can be crossed without a ticket. Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, at Santa Maria delle Grazie, needs booking weeks in advance, even more so during the holidays. The basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, where the city’s patron is celebrated on 7 December, is ten minutes’ walk from the castle.

In the evening, the Navigli, the canals in the south of the city, come alive for aperitivo, and the quays of the Naviglio Grande host artisans’ markets on some December weekends. The Brera district, with its art gallery and its lanes, lends itself to Christmas shopping away from the big chains. Milan Christmas market only takes an hour or two on its own, half a day with the Oh Bej! Oh Bej! fair; the city itself easily holds you for three days, between the museums, the Duomo terraces and a Sant’Ambrogio evening spent walking round the castle with a firunatt in hand.