Murdaugh Murders Podcast - FEED DROP: Wherever It Leads... Milan: 'Festina Lente' Making Haste Slowly Through Milano With Tour de Force Marta Mondelli

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

We're taking a break from True Sunlight this week, but we hope you enjoy this episode of 'Wherever It Leads... Milan' Follow the show at staypes.ky/wherever Tourists sprint to Rome and Florence while one of Europe’s most alive cities hums quietly in the north — and that’s exactly what makes Milan extraordinary.  This week, writer, author, and Milanese insider Marta Mondelli pulls back the curtain on a city of hidden courtyards, wooden streetcars, world-class aperitivo, and jasmine-soaked springs.  She explains why cappuccino after 11am is a “crime”, why the Milanese party as hard as they work, and why spring open days unlock palaces most visitors never see.  Journalist Mandy Matney and producer David Moses share their own Milan memories — late-night dumplings in Chinatown, a train through the Alps, streets packed on a Tuesday like it was Saturday — while Marta weighs in on Lee Gilley’s asylum claim in nearby Turin and Italy’s growing conversation around feminicide.  Plus: Lake Como, Turin, and the art of spending your tourism money where it actually matters. Learn More about Marta Mondelli: @martamondelli Reset Stories Podcast @resetstoriespodcast Episode Resources: Festina Lente Milano — Marta's handcrafted candle shop in the Isola neighborhood 🕯️ Cenacolo Vinciano — Official tickets for Leonardo's Last Supper (book well in advance) 🖼️ Milan Duomo — Rooftop tickets and visitor info for the Cathedral 🏛️ Museo Egizio, Turin — The world's oldest Egyptian museum, second only to Cairo 🏺 Salone del Mobile — Milan Design Week, when the whole city becomes a gallery 🪑 Varenna, Lake Como — The mid-lake village the Milanese actually prefer ⛵ LUNASHARK Media — Support the investigative journalism behind Wherever It Leads 🦈 ⁠⁠Premium Members⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ also get access to all new bonus episodes, video episodes, case files, live trial coverage and exclusive live experiences with our hosts. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠CLICK HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more and join ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3BdUtOE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Luna Shark Merch With a Mission shop at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lunasharkmerch.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support Our Show, Sponsors and Mission: https://lunasharkmedia.com/support/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Quince⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hungry Root⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bombas⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find us on social media: ⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/whereveritleadspod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram.com/TrueSunlightPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/@LunaSharkMedia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@lunasharkmedia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/moseswanders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bsky.app/profile/mandy-matney.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram.com/mandy_matney⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠    *** Alert: If you ever notice audio errors in the pod, email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and we'll send fun merch to the first listener that finds something that needs to be adjusted! *** **Portions of this episode's production have been assisted by Ai models according to LUNASHARK's privacy and Ai Policies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

To understand Milan, you have to understand one thing first. This is a city that has been knocked down and rebuilt more times than almost any other in Europe. Our guest today, Marta Mandeli, will tell us later that practically every Italian city has been destroyed and rebuilt. Milan just did it more often. Milan doesn't begin with Rome. It begins with the Celts. Around 590 BC, a Celtic people called the Insurbrus founded a settlement here on the flat fertile plain of the Po Valley. The name that came down to us, Mediolanum, is often read as the middle of the plain.

For more than three centuries, this was a Celtic town. Then, in 222 BC, Rome arrived. The Roman Republic conquered Mediolanum and folded it into the Roman world, and the Romans did what Romans do. They laid the city out in a tidy grid, parallel and perpendicular streets, with gates facing the roads out of town. Ride the metro to Milan's Duomo stop today, and you can look down through glass panels at the actual Roman streets,

still there beneath the modern city. Mediolanum grew so important that under the late empire, it served for a time as an imperial capital of the Roman West. After the Roman Empire fell, Milan endured a wave of invaders. But in the 12th century, the city did something remarkable. It pushed back. When the Holy Roman Emperor tried to bring the northern Italian cities to heal, Milan helped lead the Lombard League, an alliance of cities that resisted imperial control. Out of that resistance, Milan emerged as an independent commune, a self-governing city.

Power then passed to two great dynasties. First, the Visconti, who began the cathedral and raised Milan into a duchy. Then the Sforza, who married into the Visconti power and ruled through the height of the Renaissance. Under the Sforza, Milan became a genuine cultural and artistic powerhouse. magnet for painters, sculptors, and engineers. This is the Milan that hired a restless young polymath from a small Tuscan village called Vinci, and will come back to him, this man, Da Vinci. The Renaissance glory did not last. Beginning in the 1500s, Milan fell under the control of the Spanish Habsburgs, and then in the 18th century passed to the Austrian Habsburgs governed from Vienna.

Now, being ruled from a foreign capital is rarely something a city celebrates, but these long centuries of Spanish and then Austrian control also brought extended stretches of relative stability, administrative reform, and serious urban development. A number of the institutions in public works that shaped modern Milan traced their roots to this era. It's one of the quiet contradictions of the city. Milan's independence was interrupted for 200 years, and yet the whole time, Milan kept building. By the 1800s, Milan had become something more dangerous to its Austrian rulers than just a wealthy city. It had become a place of ideas, a hotbed of enlightenment and romanticism, and of rising anti-Austrian sentiment.

That sentiment boiled over famously in 1848 in the five days of. of Milan when the citizens rose up and briefly drove the Austrian army out of the city. The dream of a single Italian nation, the Resorgimento. This concept was gathering force and Milan was at its beating heart. In 1860, Milan and the region of Lombardi joined the newly unified kingdom of Italy. more than a thousand years of communes, duchies, and foreign crowns, Milan at last, was part of Italy. These recent hundred years is how Milan became Milan. The 20th century was brutal. During the Second World War, Milan endured German occupation and heavy Allied bombing. Entire districts were

flattened, even La Scala, the great opera house. That is why, walking the city today, you'll see graceful 19th century building standing right next to plain concrete blocks from the 1950s and 60s. The scars and the stitches of a city rebuilt in a hurry. And rebuilt Milan did. It became the engine of Italy's post-war economic miracle, the boom that lifted the whole country. And then, in the 1970s and 80s, Milan's deep heritage in textiles and design did something extraordinary. It propelled the city onto the world stage as one of the planet's true fashion capitals in the same breath as Paris, New York, and London. Mediolanum, the Celtic town in the middle of the plain, had become the New York of Italy.

Here is a piece of advice that runs through this whole episode. Milan is not only Milan. It is also a launch path. Some of the best days of a Milan trip are the days you're going to be. leave Milan and the trains make it effortless. So let's talk about two of them, a city and a lake. First, Turin, the renal, about an hour west of Milan by high-speed train. And if you've listened to our true sunlight coverage of accused murderer Lee Gilley's flight to Milan or our drop feed series, called Means to Flea, Justice for Krista Bauer-Gilly, you would know Torino is where Lee is spending time

seeking asylum. But I digress. Turin, like Milan, once wore the crown. When Italy was unified, Turin was the country's first capital, and you can feel it here. The city has a regal, elephant, almost Parisian air, long avenues, grand 19th century squares, a river running through it, the Alps standing strong on the horizon. It is, frankly, an underrated city. And what's What's there to do there? Well, start with chocolate because Turin essentially invented modern Italian chocolate. This is the birthplace of Janduya, the silky blend of chocolate and hazelnut. And the industrial descendant of that idea is a little jar called Nutella. The gelato is superb. And Turin is also a city of museums. It holds one of the world's greatest collections

of Egyptian antiquities. The Museo Igizio, second only to Cairo, and the National Cinema Museum, housed inside the soaring Molle Antenaliana. For people who love film, a cinema museum inside a landmark tower is close to sacred ground. Marta's honest note and ours, Teren really deserves a couple of days.

And even if y'all can spare a single day from a trip to Milan, it is absolutely worth the train ticket. An hour out, a different former capital, a whole different vibe. And then another hour and you are back in Milan in time for an Apertivo. Now we got to talk about the lake. Lake Como is the postcard, those steep green mountains dropping straight into the deep blue water of the lake. From Milan, you can be lakeside and well-under-end.

under an hour by train. But here is the insider move. It is the same instinct as the rest of this episode. The town actually named Como, the city at the southern tip of the lake, is the busiest and most touristy stop on the water. The Melanese themselves, Marta tells us, tend to skip it. So maybe skip ahead with them. Head instead for the mid-lake villages.

Verena on the eastern shore is a stack of faded red and gold houses above a narrow waterfront, small, romantic and reachable by direct train from Boulon in about an hour, which makes it many travelers' favorite base. Across the water, on the point where the lake splits in two, sits Belagio, the so-called Pearl of the Lake, more famous and more crowded, but genuinely lovely, with its stairways of shops and its grand via gardens. And then Managio on the western shore. the calmest of the three, a relaxed promenon town with a beautiful lakefront, gentler prices and hiking trails leading up and to the hills. If you want quieter still, look at Leno,

home to the cinematic Villa de Balbionello or Little Balano with its dramatic gorge. The trick on Lake Como is simple. The towns are all stitched together by fairy. Base yourself in one of the smaller villages, ride boats in between them, and you get the whole lake without spending your whole day in one town everyone else is standing in. It's kind of like Cinque Terre with its train, and if your taste run to the sea instead, Marta points out that the Ligurian coast, Genoa and the Cinque Terre, is about two hours from Milan. The lesson holds, in this corner of Italy, the next extraordinary place is always about an hour

or two down the line. Which brings us, at last, to our guest, and we could not have asked for a better guide to Milan. Martimundelli is a writer, an actress, and a producer who has worked professionally in both Italy and the United States for more than two decades, on stage, on screen, and behind the microphone as a vocal artist. As a playwright, her work, plays like The Window and Toscana have been staged at the Cherry Lane theater in Manhattan, with critics reaching for comparisons to Edward Albi. She wrote and directed her first feature film, The Contenders, which earned the Aloha Accolade

Award at the Honolulu Film Festival. And she is the author of two novels. Her first, I'm probably saying this wrong, Okinaikane Quare de Chervo, and her most recent, also probably saying this wrong, La Mogle del Sieto. published in 2025. Marta also lives the kind of layered creative lives that Milan rewards. Since 2011, she has hosted a literary festival in southern Tuscany, Capalbio Libri, reading the best of contemporary Italian writing on stage and meeting its authors.

She also co-created and co-hosts a podcast, Reset Stories, about people who have changed their lives for the better. And in the most amazing and Milanese twist of all, she runs her own scented candle shop in the city, named Festina Lente, after the Latin motto meaning make haste slowly. Marta lived in New York for nearly two decades before moving to Italy, which means she sees Milan the way that many of our listeners will, with one foot in each world. Marta reached out to us to help us translate news about Lee Gilley, and gosh, we are so glad she did. David, let's bring her in. Hello, Marta, thank you so much for joining us.

We're so, so thankful that you are sharing time with us today. Bonjourno from Milan. Are you kidding me? I mean, you are, I've listened to you for years. So this is like truly an honor. and an out-of-body experience. Oh, gratzimele. Boniorno.

We're so excited to talk with you. Thank you. And I love your new podcast. I think it's great. It's great to have that because it's not like go this, go there, do this. It's really interesting. I mean, I'm discovering things. Like, it's a podcast that everybody should listen when they go to that particular place

so they know where they're going. It's great. It's great. Thank you. so much. Thank you. Yeah. And Italy is one of our favorite places in the world. And we've been looking for somebody Italian to talk to you. And Milan is also a great city that's underrated. It is. Whenever we tell people that we love it, people are like, really? You liked Milan? You didn't go to Tuscany or what about Roma? Everyone talks about all roads lead to Roma.

It's true. But Milan is so beautiful and so massive. It's so big. It's subduits. It's subdued. though, right? It's not like beautiful in a very out there way like Rome or Florence or Venice. It's, you know, as you said, Savannah is rooftops. Milan is courtyards. It's inside. So, and sometimes in the spring, in fact, I took some notes just in case I forget things, but in the spring, which is the best place, best time to visit Milan, I think, the FI, which is an organization that, you know, manages the many multicultural things and, you know, buildings and churches that we have, they open the doors of certain buildings that otherwise you will not see. There's a palace here, a building that has flamingos in his backyard. Backyards are the place to just get lost through Milan and peer into a backyard and

see how cute it is. And it's so beautiful and old. It's just beauty. It's not out there. You need to look for it in Milan. No, I appreciate that immensely. where I lived for 10 years in Georgia, they do something called the Savannah Tour of Homes, which is very similar. So there's all of these antebellum, old, old manor houses that have been either refinished or definitely re-landscaped. And people allow folks into their homes to sort of peek around. That's beautiful. It sounds similar. Yeah, yeah. And we just have so much. We just have so much. Also, Italy, I always define it as a continent. It's so very, very, in culture, in nature, food, you can travel 20 miles and you have different, you know,

folks speaking different ways and food that is different. I love that. Yeah, like Milan, for example, I always say to my American friends, I say, okay, so you have to consider every time I see something based on Milan, there's always like a mandolin playing. Right. Which is, I understand, you know, like Italians don't know where South Carolina is, for example. Why should America know that mandolin is from Naples and nobody used to play mandolin in Milan? Yes.

Or, for example, like Milan, okay, so Milan is very sleek. It's the New York of Italy. So industry, advertisement, fashion is every day. Like all the... Winter. It has winter. It has winter. But not like for you're...

We have all the seasons, which is great also because in New York, there's no... There are three days of spring and then there's scorching hot. Here there's, you're right. Jasmine is everywhere because you can smell it. It's beautiful. Spring is really great here. Summer's very hot, so I would not recommend visiting in the summer. So that's for sure.

That's when we went. It was extremely hot. It was higher. Yeah. And we went on, there was like a heat wave, right? September. Yeah, it was late August, early September. We took the train from Zurich through the Alps to Como.

and then to Anto Milan. And it was very warm. Yeah. Very warm. But magical and there was a hustle that we hadn't seen in other cities. And that's why our Italian series will be longer than others because there's so many different places. There's different vibes, different vibrations, different food, different people. Completely.

And Milan was so shocking to me that like, and I'm a huge fan of Asian. Asian-influenced culinary. And I was dazzled by the Asian culinary experiences that were available in Milan. It's not just pizza and pasta, of course, in Italy. There are, it is the, it was a cornucopia of different. Oh, yeah, there is now. It was fascinating. Just dumpling shops open till 3 a.m., 4 a.m., which I enjoyed.

And we also loved how many, it was like, I think we were there on a Monday or Tuesday night, And the streets were just packed with people, like drinking, having a good time. And very much of politics. Yeah. In the United States, I don't think you get as much of that, like, the beauty feel. It seemed like they all live there, too. It was very, very much a local culture versus swamped with tourists everywhere. At least that's how it felt to us.

It is. It is. It's definitely not like, I mean, I don't know how people live in Florence. It's such a small place with so many tourists or Venice. Oh, my gosh. Rome as well. It's too big. You can't absorb all that, all that. But in Milan, yeah, we're kind of a little bit not in the radar. So I guess it's okay. Very multicultural. I have a lot of, as they call themselves, ex-pack. I hate that. We're all immigrants. It's fine. Privileged immigrants.

But there are a lot of Americans who live here now. And apparently, Milan has become the place where multi-millionaire come and live more than Dubai because the city has a threshold for for taxes. So you can pay an amount of taxes. And if you make billions, you're still going to pay that amount of tax. Also, we might be heading to Milan for a visit because as you know, Lee Gilly is claiming asylum in Turin, in Torino. I know. I sent you the latest. It's shocking because I do understand. First of all, I'm very happy De La Republica, the second thing I sent you, called it a feminicide. Yeah. Fine.

It's great. But unfortunately, he's really going at this thing that Europeans and Italians also don't stand for death penalty. So he's claiming that is a poor, innocent man. So I really do hope. And obviously, he got two female lawyers. Yeah. Yeah. I really do hope that they do the right thing.

because the great thing about, no, it's not great, but feminicide has been talked a lot in Italy. We had like about 150 women murder a year and our country is not very big. Milan is on the rise. Obviously, feminicide bona fide, killed by their partners or ex-partners. So what's happening with what you were, you know, you're exposing as well. So hopefully things are shifting. If they were like 10 years ago, I kind of think that he would have gotten away with it. Or, you know, it would have been granted asylum, you mean?

Probably. But now it's called a feminist. I mean, the public opinion here don't count because we're not, you know, we're not going to influence anybody. But the fact that the paper called it feminicide, it's despicable. Absolutely. And some of the Italian coverage mentions that Krista was also pregnant. at the time of her death. Oh, yeah, all of them.

All of them. Right, which is, as Italy being a strongly Catholic persuasion. Yeah, we are Catholic, but not as strong as, you know, like I feel, I feel culturally as strong to be, you know, we belong to the Catholic, Roman Catholic religion, but it's more cultural almost. We're less going at it, you know. Did you say you lived in the United States? I lived in New York for 18 years.

Oh, wow. My husband is from New York. York. He's one of the good American. And my kids were born there. And then when they were three and a half and one and a half, we decided to move. If you had to describe Milan's personality, beyond postcards, beyond the Duomo, beyond the fashion runways, what does it feel like to live there if you could describe that? Okay. So Milan, being very big is made of different feelings. You have different moods. But definitely it's a busy city of people who work, very New Yorker, always, you know, in a rush. But they know how to enjoy life. They, you know, we have this thing that is called aperitivo. That's why Negroni,

Campari, the sprits, everything is, is very popular now became popular also in the U.S. Because Aperitivo is the thing that we do after work around 6 p.m. We go, we have a glass of wine because we never drink without food and you have a little something to eat. Certain aperitivi in Milan are so big. There's so much choices of food and so many things to eat that you can literally have dinner. They'll call it apericena, which is aperitivo and chin. Aperacena. Aperecena. So yeah, so it's, I feel maybe people in the South will go like, ah, Milan doesn't know how to enjoy

their life, but no, no, we, we, I think we are. We're working hard and we are partying hard. After a quick break, we'll be right back. Manny and I both watched Passport to Europe with Samantha Brown in our younger years. And she has a fantastic episode on Milan and Torino. But the Milan episode goes into the Aberdevi and mountains of the most beautiful food. She found buffets. Oh, yeah.

Did they still do that after COVID? They did. Finally, they are back. I am so glad you can find the best. The best. You can literally eat dinner. Yeah. My eyes are wide open.

And so last time I sort of focused on dumplings because we were only there for a day. So I just hung out in Chinatown eating dumplings all day. But on our return, which might be soon because of the gilly situation, apperitevee, apperati. That's my... I will scout the places for you. It is really a great. experience. It looks, sounds so magnificent. When you think about, you know, a northern Italian city like Milan and it being more business-minded like New York, is it fair that it might have

characterizations or rather mischaracterizations? You mentioned that people go to Rome and Florence and all the tourists are there, but not many are in Milan? Are there things that you wish people would know more about Milan that they might not understand? Okay, first of all, there's some things that are good for everything in Italy. I would suggest Negroni for aperitivo because Negroni is not a spretz. Spreze is invented, was invented in Verona and in the east, Verona and Venetia. But definitely the aperitivo is missed in other places. Milan and Torino are the aperitivo town.

So definitely that is something that I believe you miss if you don't stop in Milan. That's for sure. So, well, every city has his own street food or, you know, like sort of little things that you eat on the way for lunch or something. We do, even in Milan, have lunch sitting down, people and offices come down to restaurants and sit down civilized for an hour and they have their meal. They also drink wine. But then they have coffee. At lunch. A little, I saw them.

I love that. Yeah. Well, I do too, wouldn't it? I would not function if I had to write. but, you know, it's okay. You can have an espresso afterwards, but not a cappuccino. Capucino, never after 11 a.m.

This is... Never after 11. Never. Okay, got it. There's something that... But espresso is fine. Espresso, every time of... You can always have an espresso.

Okay, but cappuccino, not after 11. What time is dinner for you then? 7.30, 8. Much... It's not like late. No. Like Spain late. Late.

Naples? Yeah, those... Yeah. No, no. Does Naples do a late dinner too? Naples and Sicily, absolutely. It goes with almost with what we cook with. I mean, I'm from Naples.

My mom is from Naples. My father is from the Amalfi Coast. So I cook with an extra virgin and olive oil, full Mediterranean diet. But in the north, past Amelia Romagna, where Bologna is with, you know, lasagna and all that, it's butter. Absence of tomatoes.

Oh, it's dairy for the mountains. Yeah. Uh-huh. And Mediterranean died from Tuscany down. So even Bologna is famous for lasagna, tortellini, all that. That's heavy on the meat, not so much oil. Interesting. And in the north, you eat much sooner.

And in the south, you eat much later. And there's something I have to say about Milan. They have street cars. I don't know if you saw them when you went there. Street cars are beautiful. They have old ones that apparently some of them have been sold to San Francisco, to the city of San Francisco that uses it because they're so beautiful. If you come here again,

when you come here again, please ride the old ones. They're iron around inside. Everything is wood. They have old lamps with glass lamp shades. They're so pretty. So that's another great way to. And this is something that nobody else has it.

Nobody else. We have that. On that subject of historic infrastructure, you see this construction and deconstruction, construction and deconstruction, much like Atlanta in the United States, which was burned and then burned. But Atlanta is a very much more modern city than Savannah, where I used to live, because it wasn't destroyed as many times. And in Milan, it has much more of a modern feel to it.

But are there still places that you can see some of those older historic artifacts or structures or architecture? Yeah, yeah. Milan was a Celtic town. When the Romans invaded it and called it Mediolanum, then they built the structure the way it is. You know, they would build everything parallel and perpendicular with doors to the city. And we have, when you go to the train station, the subway train station in the Duomo, which is where a main cathedral is with a big square, you can still see, they open it up and you can see some of the streets of the ancient Roman. It's beautiful.

Like a glass top and you can look down. A glass top? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, it's beautiful. We don't have, obviously, as many ruins as Rome has or Greek ruins like Sicily. But there are things like that. But every city in Italy has been destroyed and rebuilt.

I mean, after the Romans that were the Visigoths, the Austrian, the Austrian Empire, the French, the Spaniards, Napoleon, the Nazi. I mean, we had so many invaders everywhere in Italy. So it expands. In fact, the circle of the doors now is bigger. And every door is called as the name of the city that it will reach. So, yeah, Porta, Venice. It's Porta Genoa for Genoa. It's really charming that way.

It's true, though, that the most beautiful buildings are from 1800s. If you see them now, the old ones. But a lot of them were, were bombed. And so you have those ugly constructions from the 60s or not. Just concrete. Savannah's got that, too. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so Leonardo da Vinci lived in Milan for 17 years, and the Last Supper probably has one of his most famous paintings is on display there, correct? Yes. Is it worth it? To go see it? I would say standing in line for that, I think it's worth it. It's a great place. It's a fresco, and he improvised with it because he was constantly doing it.

things, you know, studying the anatomy of the body and doing construction for the city of Milan. That's why he was called. He's from Vinci, which is a small village in Tuscany. He was called by the municipality in Milan to threaten the, like for military purpose. But he did so much. And for some reason, there's this little beautiful square in the center and there's a big, a small little room where the priest and, you know, the nuns would eat mchenacolo. he decorated that with the last supper. Worth it. Worth it. Also, I think worth it is to go up in a duomo. First of all, when you go to the duomo, the main cathedral there, buy a taken in advance and wear something to cover your shoulders. If they don't have it, if you don't, unfortunately,

if you have, you know, if you're dressed with a sleeves list up, they give you a little cap, but it's very hot because it's plastic. So in the summer it's very hot. If you were a tourist going to Milan and wanted to take a day trip somewhere. Where would you go? Oh, definitely, Como, because you can take the train and in 30 minutes you're there. And the train station is so close to the village that you don't need to rent a car, do anything. I would also, there's so many small villages. They're like with super beautiful things. We have so much art. So, you know, go to Padilla where they have a beautiful old church there. And Torino is also close by. although it deserves a few days probably.

More time. Yeah. Can you tell us about Torino? What's your experience there? We're thinking about visiting the prison? Oh, my God. Toria. I imagine.

I've never visited the prison, but I used to go there so many times because my cousins used to live there. He's great. He's got a beautiful river through it. It used to be a capital, the first capital of Italy when we unified. Unification.

Exactly. So he's got a beautiful feel of a regal feel. of beautiful 1800 buildings. It's really pretty, but it's smaller. It's got great food. They invented Janduya there, which is milk, chocolate, and hazelnuts. You know, Nutella is basically the industrial product

that comes from there. So gelato is great there. I mean, great. So Torino is really, really great. And they have a beautiful museum of movies. And how far is Torino from Milan? I think maybe 45 minutes. It's not that far away.

Like on a train? On a train. Yeah, yeah. Best to do a train or can you drive there? Train is always the best in Italy. Train's best. In Italy, I would always say city traveling, train. Countryside traveling, rent a car and get lost in Tuscany.

But city visiting, train, absolutely. Train. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Torino apparently has the second largest collection of Egyptian antiquities and artifacts. They have a big Egyptian museum there. Muzer Egyzio, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And won't give it back.

They never get anything back. Never, never get anything back. I mean, we have been bagged from Mona Lisa, but they don't give it to the French. Right, right. They're not giving that back. No, no, that's a difference, though. There's a difference, though.

Leonardo, I think, gifted it to the French. In the case of Mugia Eizio, we just, stole it, so that's not fair. When you think about, I mean, Milan has, what, three, four million people that live in Milan? I mean, it's a massive, massive infrastructure. It's heavily populated. And along with that, you mentioned feminine aside is a codified crime that is now being looked at as potentially a problem people want to care about.

But what are some of those issues or challenges that Milan faces that you're comfortable talking about? And is anyone providing solutions? Is Milan managed well? Are there challenges that still need to be overcome? I think it's Milan is managed well. As you said, is a very big city. So it's hard to, you know, manage a big city. Although the city center, the municipality is very small.

It's made of like a ring of small villages, one after the other. You don't see the end of it. So Milan seems enormous. But each municipality has his own, you know, management. The city itself, I think right now we're facing two main problems. One is the quality of the air. We unfortunately are in a plane shielded by the Alps. So there's no recharge of air.

So what the mayor is trying to do is trying to eliminate car that run on gas and help and facilitate electric cars. it's a very difficult endeavor because everybody has a car here, like everybody. So that's a big problem because I think we have already surpassed in 2026 the maximum of toxins in the air that the European Union allows a city in a year. So that's problematic. And I hope that Italians understand that they have to give up their cars or start to go on electric cars because that's very important. What are some of the challenges that Milan faces as a nature of its location in northern Italy? It used to be the capital, but now it's, and Torino used to be the capital, but now Rome is the capital, right?

So are there things that separates Milan from legislation or makes it feel like it's sort of on the outskirts? Or does it feel unified as part of Italy? Well, first of all, Italy will never be unified. We're such a young nation. It's been too early. So we always constantly fight with each other. We still do. It's a history, 2,000 years of fighting.

But Milan definitely feels, I'm glad for Milan that we don't have the government. Rome has the government and the Vatican. It's a mess. It's very difficult to be the mayor of Rome, I'm sure, probably much so than to be the mayor of Milan. And I think that Milan doesn't feel, you know, in the periphery of Italy, just because it's so inside of Europe that we don't feel like we're not there. I would say maybe other big cities like Bari maybe, which is in Apulia or Naples feels a little bit more like left out. Also historically because the South, unfortunately, has been left out since the conception of the unification.

So that's... It did have a different feel of Naples. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I was going to ask like a show in Spain. I know that Bartholona is kind of separate from the rest. The Catalonian separatists. Yes. There are like. Oh my God. Yes. Yeah. And it's a big thing there. Is, would you say the south of southern Italy is kind of different from the rest of Italy? To the point they want to leave? Or politically different? Or is there anything like that going on there? No. In fact, I think, I think that Lega Lombarda, all the Lombardy, Lombardia, all the rich regions, Veneto where Venez is, Milan where Lombardy where Milan is, and Piedmont, where Torino, Turin is, are leading the GDP.

We, in these regions, most of the money goes to Rome. So a lot of people wanted to separate. So it's more than North that wants to separate from the South. Oh, interesting. It's a tough, yeah. Because of money. It's a tough issue because of money and taxation. Yeah, and that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're paying all the taxes. But I believe, I think it's, you know, we have, we pay taxes, but we also have free health insurance and free education. And so, yeah, I'm going to pay the taxes, you know. Those are two nice benefits. Yeah.

David and I are, as we're looking at places to go and what to, we're just like, we're so sick of our tax. just not doing anything. But at least in Europe, you get healthcare. You have things that you actually can hold on to and get versus our money just disappears. Yeah. It's true. It was shocking for me, even though I was raised here after 18 years in New York, the first time I visited my general practitioner. And he was like, okay, bye.

And I was like, wait, I don't have to pay anybody. I don't have to show my insurance. No. But, yeah, it's, I feel for you because I left New York, which was my place. And so I think I understand what you can go through because leaving the place that you called home because the circumstances are so bad. It's still, we're still lucky that we can do it because I'm sure there are people that cannot do it. And they're absolutely. Absolutely.

Very fortunate to have the option. But it's, it's incredibly sad, incredibly sad, because I can feel how much you love. of South Carolina as well. Malaga looks beautiful on the Mediterranean. We're thinking about Arizona in the United States as a place to move to, but I don't know. Yeah, we'll see. We're still just exploring.

I imagine. I imagine. I wanted to say only one more thing about Milan. Yeah, please. Everybody complains in Italy. It's our national sport. And so everybody complains on Milan that there's a lot of crime, a lot of crime. So I looked it up because I don't feel it here.

I live in Isola, it's called. It's the neighborhood over Chinatown. It means island because it was once isolated from the rest of the city. And now it's bustling with nightlife and shops. It's beautiful. It's like the Williamsburg, Brooklyn of Milan. But they told me, you know, you have to be careful when you go around. I have to say, I looked it up.

So Milan is the city with the highest. crime rate in Italy. It's also the biggest, followed by Florence, incredibly enough, and Rome. But the crimes are not that I want to discard that. In Milan are mainly, you know, women being killed by their partners. But the rest is really just muggings and pickpocketing. So I was going to ask this, did you feel, do you feel a lot safer in Milan than you did in New York? It's the opposite, actually. Really? Really. I felt very safe in New York. York, train stations are places to avoid in general in Italy. I don't know in the rest of Europe, but definitely in Italy.

And Milan train stations can be kind of, you know, dangerous. Meaning, again, big-pocketing. Just property crime. Just for the most part. Yes. You need to be careful. For like with tourists going there, just cover your purse, just be aware of your surroundings. What would you recommend?

Yeah, I don't want to be alarmist. but just the regular things that you would do when you go to a big city in Europe. So, yeah, be careful where you put your wallet and have your purse with you. Don't leave it around. And in train stations, especially, or in trains, like trains from Palin, Milan, our airport, into the city, you know, just be generally a little bit careful. Nothing has ever happened to me so far, and I'm knocking on wood, but, you know, except a woman who once came to my shop and pretended it,

wanted to buy something and then rob me. No. Oh, no. I'm so sorry you want to do that. She took my wallet. No. Oh, no. She did.

But again, I'm lucky. I'm lucky, you know, I always put things in perspective. But yes, it's, it's also we don't have guns and thank God. And hopefully we'll never do. Yeah. So if people get, if there's an altercation in the street, one person, you know, knives another. Obviously it's terrible. But it doesn't lead to mass murdering or enormous incidents.

Another question I had for you, the shopping in Milan we have to talk about. So I am more of a discount shop type of, like I like expensive store. Do you have any suggestions for people that do not want to drop thousands and thousands of dollars but want a nice, like expensive looking outfit from Milan? I agree with you. And my answer has always been vintage. There are some vintage shops here. They are curated to the tea. Beautiful, not just secondhand, but like great pieces. And I would say that for sure. Window shopping, for sure. But yeah, vintage. Vintage shops. I love that. Yeah. I will window shop in the fancy stores all the time. I love just walking past Prada and all of the just glamorous love. but I just have a hard time spending that kind of money on clothes. Me too. It's so excessive.

Like in the 90s, when we had all the big, you know, Valentino was still around, Versace was still around, they were really made well. And the brand and the made in Italy brand actually meant something. Now I feel sometimes you spend a lot of money just for the, to have the little tag. Name. Right. Yeah. It's, yeah.

And it's all made in. Yeah, pretty much every time I ever get something super expensive, I always regret it because I'm like, it's nice, but it doesn't like. And I also, when I go out with it on, I want like everybody to compliment. And I feel like whenever I wear something expensive, nobody ever does. And I'm like, this is not worth it. Absolutely. Nobody cares about this. It's not worth it.

It's so true. It's so true. My wedding dress, I bought it at this lady here. who is amazing. And it's one of those people who love their job. So you enter and they go like, I know your type

and she picks a couple of things out of the racks and it goes like, and it was beautiful because it was like, it was white because people at the opening of La Scala for the first, you know, opera of the season, they dress in white. So it was a white gown.

And so I thought, perfect. It doesn't have bad, you know, energy in it. It wasn't it, you know, like it's, it was perfect. And so you can find really amazing thing. in vintage clothing shops. I would say that.

Yeah. Great quality and low prices. Cool. I love that. Is there anything else that you want to share before we sign off? Let me see. Yeah, I would like to mention a Forty Salone. Forisalone is Milan Design Week.

Just happened. So again, because I suggested to go in the spring, Foris Salone is an incredible time of the year. It's a week where while the fair goes on, it's all dedicated to design, interior design, everything that has to do with the home. So from faucets to carpets to wallpaper, the entire city, it's like an exhibition in contemporary art. Totally recommended.

Problem is the hotels are very pricey and there's a lot of people. But if somebody likes interior design and art, contemporary art, every store has an installation. There are prosaico glasses everywhere. You don't have to stand in line to get to the difficult to see place. You just go walk around and everything is just so beautiful. And the Jasmine are blossoming. So that I recommend if you have a little bit more budget. I love that.

That's cool. Cool. There was one more question I had. Como. I loved it. It's like a completely different vibe from Milan, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Do you, is that like where, do people from Milan go there? So for like the weekend, is that like the main getaway place? Or is it mainly Americans who watch a TV show? A little bit. So Milanese have this thing that they all in the week, on the weekend, especially now that the weather is nice. They all leave. They have the grandparents' home in the mountains, the little village where they have rented a place.

by the lake, they probably avoid Como because it's very touristic. So I would recommend just go to another side of the lake, Como, that is not Como, maybe. Or explore because, yeah, and the mountain is so close to here too. So there's a great way to, you know, change scenery for a while. The sea is a bit more far away. But you have Liguria, Genova, Cinque Terre, which is two hours away from here by car, or by train. Oh, that's not bad. Yeah. We also love Geneva. Genova. Genova. I love Genoa. I love some of the best pizza in the world I've had, I had there. Remember that sweet man who made us a nice pizza. He loved David. The Italians love David. My amici Carmelo.

Oh. It's everywhere. I love it. Like David, David. The Cecilian loved you. I'm moving. Come on. It's got to get the dogs over.

Marta, thank you so much for sharing your time. Yeah, this is something. We learned so much. We can't wait to come visit you. Oh, my God. And for you to visit us. It means so much to me. This is so great.

And it's really terrible what Lee Gilley did, but I'm glad that they connected us. And I like that. And that's a good. That's a good thing. Yeah. I wish she didn't do that. And I wish I had the courage to contact you before that. Oh, no.

I'm glad it happened. Yeah, as soon as you did, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. Grazie me, Marta, thank you so much. We're so excited to come visit you in Milano or for you to come and say hello to us back in the States. Yeah, we'll see you in Milano. Yep. Or wherever it leads. Wherever it leads.

And we'll be right back. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in, loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Before we close the book on Milan, we'd like to share a few of the challenges, because Marta was so generous and honest about them. And we owe you the listener a deeper dive into that honest version too. Let's start with the one you'll see in every travel forum, crime.

The real picture is that year after year, Milan posts the highest reported crime rate of any province in Italy. One of Italy's leading business newspapers, Il Sole 24 Hore, publishes an annual index built on crimes reported to police, and Milan sits at the top, with roughly 7,000 reported offenses per 100,000 residents. Florence and Rome follow close behind. Together, just those three cities account for nearly a quarter of all crime reported in the entire country. But the next line reads.

a bit different. A majority of those reported crimes in Milan are theft, pickpocketing, bag snatching, and break-ins. This is overwhelmingly property crime and not violent crime. Marta Mondelli said it plainly, no guns, and street alterations rarely escalate the way they do in American cities. By the measure that frightens Americans most, deadly violence, and we don't seem to be able to do anything about it here at home, Milan is dramatically safer than most major U.S. cities. The thing genuinely worth your attention is the time-honored tradition of the pickpocket, and the hotspots are exactly where you'd guess. Crowded train stations, the airport trains, packed tourist sites, and shopping crowds. Tourists, and Americans in particular,

are studied targets. So the practical wisdom here is not fear its posture. Keep your bag close and in front of you in a crowd, don't leave your phone or your car key on the cafe table and be a little extra alert at Milano Centrale and on the Malpenza Airport train. That's it. That's all you can do. And it's a pretty good defense. The deeper challenges are quieter,

and they are the ones locals actually live with. The first is the air. Milan sits in the Po Valley, a flat basin walled in by the Alps. and the geography traps pollution. There is simply nowhere for the bad air to go. Milan regularly ranks as one of the most polluted cities in Western Europe and routinely blows past the European Union's annual limits for harmful particulates,

sometimes within the first months of the year. The city is fighting it, pushing hard toward electric vehicles and low emission zones. But as Marta noted, nearly everyone here owns a car. and that is a hard habit to change. The second is affordability, and this is the one reshaping who actually gets to call Milan home. Milan has become one of the most expensive housing markets in Europe. A one-bedroom in the center can run for well over 1,500 euros a month, and rent can swallow more than 70% of an average local salary.

Studies have found that over the last decade, home prices in Milan, climbed roughly two to three times faster than incomes. Add a national flat tax regime that has turned the city into a magnet for the global ultra-wealthy, and you get a sinner increasingly priced for newcomers and investors, while the teachers, the artists, the wage earners, and the families who have been here for generations get pushed toward the edges. It is the same story playing out in Lisbon, in Barcelona, and dozens of other beautiful cities. Milan is living in it right now. So here's the question we always come back to on this show.

You are one visitor for a few days in a city of millions. How could you possibly make a difference? It can feel almost arrogant to try, but you can because where your money lands is a choice and small choices multiplied are not small. Instead of dropping a fortune in the luxury chains, shop Milan's beautifully curated vintage stores. quality, character, and the money stays in the city. Eat with the Milanese, eat for lunch. Sit down neighborhood tratorias rather than tourist traps ringing the Duomo. Buy directly from artisans and makers. Visit Marta Mandeli's candle shop, Festinolente, linked in the description.

It's exactly the kind of small independent business a thoughtful traveler can choose to support. Tourism concentrated on three or four blocks strains those blocks and starves everywhere else. Wander out to neighborhoods like Isola, Marta's own island above Chinatown, or the Chinatown district along Via Paolo's Sarpi with dumpling shops that I have loved and take the day trips.

Every day you give to Torino, Verena, menagio, is a day of pressure lifted off the center of Milan and a day of support sent somewhere new. Use the trams and the metro. The golden old wooden tram is a joy to ride, and it is also one fewer car in that trapped valley air. In shoulder season, spring, when the city isn't straining under summer heat and summer crowds,

when the jasmine is out, when the cortile are bustling, and Milan is simply at its best. This city is, in Marta's lovely phrase, city, a city of courtyards, those cortile, rather than rooftops, a city whose beauty is hidden behind doors. So go to the spring open days, when the historic ballases and gardens you would never otherwise see throw their doors open, peek into the cortile, ride up to the roof of the Duomo, see a film or an opera, or visit during the Salone del Mouble when the whole city

becomes a gallery. Learn a few Italian words. Skip the cappuccino after 11, sit down for the aperivo, and let the evening take its time. That is the heart. You don't make a dent in a city by trying to consume all of it. You make a dent by paying attention, by spending or investing with care, treading lightly, and meeting the place on its own terms. Do that, and Milan won't feel expansive, expensive or impersonal at all. It will feel as it did for us like a secret someone has finally let you in on. And that secret gets better if you let it lead you. Wherever it leads.

This episode is a Lunas Shark production created by me, Mandy Matney, and by David Moses. Audio production support provided by Jamie Hoffman. Learn more about our mission and membership at lunasharkmedia.com. Interruptions provided by Loonie, Luna and Joe Pesky.