La Metropolitana di Milano

The Metro of Milan

The Metro of Milan is incredibly uniform.

Which is ironic, given the design and creativity that the city is so famous for.

But in its uniformity lies its beauty.

As far as I know, the Milano metro is the only metro in the world that uses the colour coding of its lines elaborately throughout the design of the stations and trains. M1 is all about red, M2 is all about green and M3 is pretty much all yellow. M5, the most recent line, is purple, but a bit less obvious.

The Milan Metro consists of 4 lines with a total network length of 96.8 kilometres and 106 stations. It has a daily ridership of about 1.4 million on weekdays and it is the longest metro line in Italy.

Needless to say, as a serious subway surfer, I have visited all stations and have created an alternative map of the MIlan Metro system.

The first line, Line 1 or Linea Rossa, opened in 1964. Line 2, the Linea Verde, opened 5 years later in 1969 and Line 3 (Linea Gialla) in 1990. Line 5, Linea Lilla, was completed in 2013. A fifth line, Line 4 (Linea Blu), is currently under construction and will take service between 2021 and 2023.

Beats me as to why the 5th was completed before the 4th.

Here is a selection of the stations: