Anthony Peregrine discovers there's so much more to do in Italy's fashion capital than simply hit the shops As you may know already, Milan is smart and serious, with clear city-state aspirations.Milanese people I met on my trip evidently consider the rest of Italy a slight embarrassment. This is the capital of finance, of media, of soccer and, Lord help me, of fashion. You can hear the snap of the creases in the average Milan outfit. Fortunately I'd just acquired cool new spectacles, and 21st-century shoes. As long as no one noticed the bits in between, I'd be fine.I glided around like a native, albeit one who had never before visited the city. And, crikey, what a monumental sense of entitlement Milan has. In the Piazza del Duomo, a manifest destiny to run things smacks you in the face. There's Victor Emmanuel II reining his horse in, lest he trample amblers of all nations. They're mainly looking at the cathedral which, newly cleaned, appears white but encompasses gradations of pink and grey.The facade might well tip you over the edge, were you hovering on the brink of belief. It's beyond magnificent. Granted, it took 500 years to complete - slow, even by the standards of the Italian building industry - but, well, imagine creating that extraordinary forest of spires and pinnacles and then saying: "What they all need now is a statue on top." Faith, architecture and power made fine allies back then.I went inside and got furious, so would like to warn tourists everywhere that they have 48 hours to dispose of their selfie-sticks. After that, I'll be tackling the devices with an axe. Thus will I no longer have to tolerate single-cell French adolescents throwing the shaka sign to picture themselves before St Bartholomew Flayed.story_article_left1Nearby, the triumphal entry to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele was covered in scaffolding. The famous arcade resembled more a place you'd hold a peace conference than a shopping trip. Tragic, then, that it should be colonised by Prada, Louis Vuitton and all the others established wherever big money congregates. How do rich people know where they are, when they find the exact same shops everywhere?In stately home surroundings, the Brera art gallery had all the yearning, beseeching and adoring rife in 16th- and 17th-century Italian art. Some cracking works, though - not least Caravaggio's 1606 Supper at Emmaus, and Rubens's Last Supper, which looks like a bunch of workmates down the pub. Not far away, the Castello Sforzesco indicated that Milan had long felt itself authoritative. The Viscontis were dukes, then the Sforzas, everyone adding bits to the castello until it was the size of a hamlet, and looked fit to hold all Europe at bay. Odd, then, that the city kept getting taken over by Spaniards, French and Austrians.The Navigli district is where Milan goes mildly bohemian, with canal-side bars and restaurants. Navigli is the funky flip side every great city needs. It's also quite near the church of Sant' Ambrogio, about which I would tell you more, except that the moment I got in, the doors shut for a funeral. Within moments, the coffin was walked up the aisle. Ten minutes in, I felt I could leave. "I only knew him slightly," I told the chap on the door. He nodded sympathetically, and I made haste to Santa Maria delle Grazie, where I had a 15-minute slot at 1.30pm. Fifteen minutes is all you get before Leonardo's Last Supper.Astonishingly, I had the 1.30pm slot to myself. This was fabulous. You need to maximise your allotted minutes. Initially, the fresco looks like a ghost of a picture, such has been the effect of time. But then you walk to the middle of the refectory (the painting is a monastery dining-room decoration), you stop and you walk back towards it. And - here's the thing - you know that, if there weren't a railing there, you could walk right into the picture, sit down and start talking to the apostles. There are many fine and extraordinary things in Milan but this is the most extraordinary of all.- The Daily Telegraph..