Porta Nuova and Bosco Verticale
Stand at the base of Bosco Verticale on a clear morning and you'll notice something that doesn't quite compute: trees growing from the upper floors of a skyscraper, their branches extending over the city at thirty storeys up. The two residential towers — 116 and 84 metres tall — carry 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs, and 20,000 plants across their cantilevered balconies, each planter reaching 3.35 metres out from the facade.
This is Porta Nuova, Milan's most deliberate reinvention of itself — a 346,500-square-metre mixed-use district that took nearly two decades to materialise. Below the towers, the Biblioteca degli Alberi spreads across 90,000 square metres of public parkland, threaded with cycling paths and used regularly for outdoor cinema and yoga classes.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to do so on foot from Garibaldi station — it's genuinely one minute away. The Biblioteca degli Alberi rewards a slow loop: the planting is organised by botanical family, which gives it a quieter, more considered feel than a standard city park. Mornings are best before the lunchtime office crowds arrive.
The story behind Porta Nuova and Bosco Verticale
The name Porta Nuova traces back to a twelfth-century city gate, restored in the nineteenth century and formalised by architect Giuseppe Zanoia in 1810 under Napoleon. The modern district began as an idea in 1997, when developer Gerald D. Hines partnered with Michael Topham and Riccardo Catella on what would become a US$2.5 billion project — masterplanned by three firms, Pelli Clarke Pelli, Boeri Studio, and Kohn Pedersen Fox — finally approved in 2005.
Bosco Verticale came from a specific moment: Stefano Boeri, then editing Domus, visited Dubai in April 2007 and found himself unsettled by its all-glass, all-mineral skyline. The two towers were completed in autumn 2014 and opened to the public on 10 October that year. The Qatar Investment Authority acquired full ownership of the wider district by 2015. Piazza Gae Aulenti, the district's central square, was named for the Italian architect Gae Aulenti, who died in 2012.
Good to know
Take Metro Line 5 (Lilac) to Isola or Line 2 (Green) to Garibaldi — both drop you at the edge of the district. The towers are private residences, so the experience is entirely from street level and the park. Allow two to three hours if you want to walk the full cycling loop.
Summer brings temperatures around 27–30°C, which makes the park's shade genuinely useful. The towers read best against a blue sky, so spring and early autumn — when the foliage is full but the heat is softer — tend to produce the clearest views.
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What travellers say about Porta Nuova and Bosco Verticale
A place for a new generation of buildings and a demonstration of talent for construction. Amazing architecture. You have to see it and be here.🌳🌿🏢🇮🇹
A very nice modern district — we explored it on scooters, and the whole area is beautiful, open, and full of greenery. Definitely worth a visit, and a great spot to enjoy lunch outdoors in the park.
Bosco Verticale in Milan is an extraordinary example of innovative urban architecture, combining modern high-rise design with vertical forests. The twin residential towers are covered with over 900 trees and thousands of plants, creating a green oasis in the heart of the city and improving air quality and biodiversity. Walking around the area, it’s impressive to see how nature and architecture merge, offering a unique and inspiring vision of sustainable city living.
When in Milan, if you’re interested in architecture and design, do make a stop here to simply look(from outside) at the buildings around. It’s beautiful and a popular one in the industry. There’s also quite a few things like an open seating area and stuff to see around, but make sure to spot these on the map as you go as it’s not easily visible.
The vertical garden is right next to some other tall Milan buildings and a really nice park It was nice to see the vertical garden but the one on the ground was lovely. There is a great pool which overflows on the side with lots of fish insects and some birds floating there with their fledgings. There is an open air gym as well as a playground... And even some static recliners to lay back in and just soak up the sun. Best of all it's free so enjoy it :)
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