page_title: Milan
section_title: Late modern and contemporary
hierarchical_section_title: Milan / History / Late modern and contemporary
caption_attribution_description: English: The five days of Milan 1848
context_page_description: Milan is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city in Italy after Rome. Milan served as the capital of the Western Roman Empire, the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia.
  The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million while its metropolitan city has 3.26 million inhabitants. Its continuously built-up urban area, that stretches well beyond the boundaries of the administrative metropolitan city, is the fourth largest in the EU with 5.27 million inhabitants. The population within the wider Milan metropolitan area, also known as Greater Milan, is estimated at 8.2 million, making it by far the largest metropolitan area in Italy and the 3rd largest in the EU.
  Milan is considered a leading alpha global city, with strengths in the fields of art, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, services, research and tourism. Its business district hosts Italy's stock exchange, and the headquarters of national and international banks and companies. In terms of GDP, it has the second-largest economy among EU cities after Paris, and is the wealthiest among EU non-capital cities.
context_section_description: On March 18, 1848 Milan efficaciously rebelled against Austrian rule, during the so-called "Five Days" (Italian: Le Cinque Giornate), that forced Field Marshal Radetzky to temporarily withdraw from the city. The bordering kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia sent troops in order to protect the insurgents and organsied a plebiscite that ratified by a huge majority the unification of Lombardy with Piedmont-Sardinia. But just a few months later the Austrians were able to send fresh forces that routed the Piedmontese army at the Battle of Custoza on 24 July and to reassert Austrian control over northern Italy.  About ten years later, however, Italian nationalist politicians, officers and intellectuals such as Cavour, Garibaldi and Mazzini were able to gather a huge consensus and to pressure the monarchy to forge an alliance with the new French Empire of Napoleon III in order to defeat Austria and establish a large Italian state in the region. At the Battle of Solferino in 1859 French and Italian troops heavily defeated the Austrians that retreated under the Quadrilateral line. Following this battle, Milan and the rest of Lombardy were incorporated into Piedmont-Sardinia, which then proceeded to annex all the other Italian statlets and proclaim the birth of the Kingdom of Italy on March 17, 1861.
  The political unification of Italy enhanced Milan's economic dominance over northern Italy. A dense rail network, whose construction had started under Austrian patronage, was completed in a brief time, making Milan the rail hub of northern Italy and, with the opening of the Gotthard (1882) and Simplon (1906) railway tunnels, the major South European rail hub for goods and passenger transport. Indeed, Milan and Venice were among the main stops of the Orient Express that started operating from 1919. Abundant hydroelectric resources allowed the development of a strong steel and textile sector and, as Milanese banks dominated Italy's financial sphere, the city became the country's leading financial centre. Very rapid industrialization in the last two decades of the 1800s led to the birth of a massive worker class as well as bitter social conflicts. In May 1898 Milan was shaken by the Bava Beccaris massacre, a riot related to soaring cost of living.
  Milan's economic dominance in Italy secured also a leading role for the city on the political scene. It was in Milan that Benito Mussolini built his political and journalistic careers, and his fascist Blackshirts rallied for the first time in the city's Piazza San Sepolcro; here the future Fascist dictator launched his March on Rome on 28 October 1922. During the Second World War Milan large industrial and transport facilities suffered extensive damage from Allied bombings that often hit also residential districts. When Italy surrendered in 1943, German forces occupied and plundered most of northern Italy, fueling the birth of a massive resistance guerrilla movement. On April 29, 1945 the American 1st Armored Division was advancing on Milan but, before it arrived, the Italian resistance seized control of the city and executed Mussolini along with his mistress and several regime officers, that were later hanged and exposed in Piazzale Loreto, where one year before some resistance members had been executed.
  During the post-war economic boom, the reconstruction effort and the so-called Italian economic miracle attracted a large wave of internal migration (especially from rural areas of southern Italy) to Milan. The population grew from 1.3 million in 1951 to 1.7 million in 1967. During this period, Milan was rapidly rebuilt, with the construction of several innovative and modernist skyscrapers, such as the Torre Velasca and the Pirelli Tower, that soon became the symbols of this new era of prosperity. The economic prosperity was, however, overshadowed in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the so-called Years of Lead, when Milan witnessed an unprecedented wave of street violence, labour strikes and political terrorism. The apex of this period of turmoil occurred on 12 December 1969, when a bomb explode
caption: Popular print depicting the "Five Days" uprising against Austrian rule.
exif: {}