Milan or Turin
 

Ciao,

I’m going to spend a month in Italy this spring. I will be spending my days in an immersion school learning Italian. Evenings and weekends I’d like to become somewhat intimate with one of these cities. I’d be interested in a local live music scene. My tastes range from indie to jazz. I’m not interested in discos or a singles scene. If I get brave and can find a guitar I might even try playing an open mic if such things exist. I’d also like to run a race or two while I’m there. Maybe a half marathon. Beyond that I’ll probably see a few museums. Maybe a fancy dinner or two but mostly neighborhood restaurants and bars.

I would appreciate any thoughts or comments on my plans.

Grazie,

Mike

I suspect a whole bunch of people are going to recommend Turin although I bet there is, in the end, more happening in Milan.

If you have not been to Italy before I would get on a train and see a LOT of different places on those weekends you can get "intimate" later but to each their own.

For the specific things you are looking for, Torino ticks more of your boxes than Milano does. You'll find more corners where people are willing to engage with you in Italian (Milano is very much inclined to be an English speaking international community) and you'll find a robust cocktail hour/bar scene (most Italian cocktails were invented in Torino). You'll also find a generally more open, less competitive, sociable culture, and one that goes later into the night. While the Milanesi love their cocktail scene, they also tend to head to bed early and get up early to work. Can't really speak to the live music scene, but I would expect it to also be open and experimental. Torino also has the advantage of having a more compact core, with only one outlying district of any note, so if you want to come to intimately understand a place, Torino is the easier place to do that if you are not spending 6 months in Italy. (If you decide in the end you'd rather head out sightseeing on your weekends instead of hanging out in town, Milano is better situated for that that Torino, although if you are talking about, say, 4 weekends tops, there are certainly 4-8 easy day trips from Torino.)

To run a marathon in spring, in either Milan or Torino, you might need to get on a train and spend a night someplace else. Depends on the timing of your visit. But both cities are flat and have a resident population of joggers & places to go for a run.

the Shroud cannot normally be viewed?

I like Torino a lot more than expected and like massimop says more compact but I'd say tis hard to recommend one over the other in general.

get in touch with folks like these

https://www.facebook.com/openmictorino/?ref=py_c

http://vivimilano.corriere.it/eventi...pen-mic-night/

Never been to Milan but we were in Turin recently and liked it. Saw a great Italian 'hot American swing band' called Acordi Disacordi there. There was also a great music store (mostly stringed instruments) near our hotel. That said, if Bologna can be in the running, I'd make that my first choice.

Where's your immersion school? That might have some bearing on the answers.