The Rainbow District

Milan is a beautiful city that also knows how to surprise with its many facets and little-known places that certainly deserve a visit not only by tourists but also by those who live in the city.

One of these places is certainly the Rainbow District in via Lincoln and in the adjacent via Franklin: a set of colors similar to a painter's palette and known as the street of the Milanese Burano (Venice).

In recent years this small neighborhood has become a tourist destination for modern tourists looking for unusual places to visit.

The main feature of this small neighborhood near the center of Milan are the villas with their variegated colors: the pastel shades of these two-storey houses with gardens, with floral decorations on the gates, the narrow passage that leaves no room for parked cars, make it an oasis of silence and beauty.

Even this little piece of a Milan that is a little out of the box has a history that dates back to the nineteenth century. This neighborhood was born from a housing cooperative for the workers who worked in the area. The intention was to build simple and affordable houses.
The Rainbow District was therefore born in the 1880s, near Corso Ventidue Marzo from an abandoned area. A few years earlier the Porta Tosa railway station had been demolished, becoming useless because in the meantime the Milan Central Station had been built, which had also replaced Porta Nuova.

In those days there were no social housing and that of the nascent housing cooperatives was the only cheap housing solution compared to free rents, which weighed on a large part of the salary of the workers without anything remaining in their hands. The goal was simple: the sum of the rents paid by a certain number of workers could constitute capital to build cheap houses. We might as well put them together, in the form of cooperative shares.

Today the homes in via Lincoln have very high market prices, they are exclusive, in a central position in Milan, ten minutes from the Duomo, original, each different from the other, larger than a normal apartment, they have private gardens passing. All features that raise the cost per square meter and restrict the audience of possible buyers.

To reach the Rainbow District from Milan's central station just take tram n. 9 and get off in Piazza V Giornate. From there you can walk a few meters.

Map: The Rainbow District