Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio

Founded by Ambrose himself in 379, rebuilt in brick in the eleventh century, and one of the oldest churches in the western world still in use. It is the model half the Romanesque churches in Lombardy were copied from.

You come in through a colonnaded atrium into a low brick nave with a gold altar of 835 and, in the crypt, the bones of Ambrose himself between two earlier martyrs.

What it costs

⭐ Free to enter the basilica, the atrium and the crypt. The gold altar and the small museum have a modest charge.

⚠️ Shoulders and knees, and it is a working parish.

When to go

Mornings, and outside Mass. ⚠️ It closes over the middle of the day, which catches people who arrive at one.

Getting there

Sant’Ambrogio on M2, and the basilica is at the top of the steps.

⭐ One urban ticket lasts 90 minutes and covers the metro, the trams and the buses inside the city zones — one metro journey plus as many surface changes as you can fit. A contactless bank card works at the gate, and ⚠️ you tap the same card again on the way out of a metro station. See Getting Around.

If you only have an hour

The atrium, the nave, the pulpit, then down into the crypt. Thirty-five minutes, and the atrium is the part people forget.

What people get wrong

⚠️ People treat it as a stop on the way to the Last Supper. It is ten minutes from Santa Maria delle Grazie and it is the older, stranger building of the two.