From Expo 2015 to the Winter Games, big events fuel Milan's transformation

MILAN — Milan has added the title of Olympic city to its long-held reputation as Italy's fashion and finance capital, a legacy crowning two decades of growth that has reshaped its skyline and boosted investment, tourism and cultural life in the city.

The legacy of the Milano-Cortina Winter Games is both physical, in new facilities and infrastructure, and intangible, burnishing Milan's global image.

It's the second major event to leave a lasting mark on the city, after the Expo 2015 world's fair brought new investment, tourists and talent.

"Milan is creating a distinctive brand that is able to attract an international audience,'' said Dino Ruta, who is heading up a Bocconi University study on the economic impact of the recently concluded Games for the International Olympic Committee, which is expected later this year.

Tangible returns

The physical legacy of the Milano-Cortina Olympics is relatively slight, by design. The Games were spread out across several venues, urban and mountainous, hundreds of kilometers apart to leverage existing facilities and save on new construction.

Milan inherits the brand new Santagiulia arena, which hosted Olympic hockey and will be used for concerts, exhibitions and sporting events, while the athletes' Olympic Village will be turned into housing for 1,700 students — badly needed in a city with 10 universities and an affordable housing crisis.

Preliminary data gathered for the Bocconi study shows that about four billion euros ($4.7 billion) were invested in the Games, including for new and upgraded sports facilities, transportation investments on roads, metro accessibility, railways and ski lifts, energy costs and the administration of the Games, Ruta said.

In Milan, the Games cost 735 million euros ($867 million) to host 90 indoor ice events and the opening ceremony at the San Siro Stadium, while visitors were on course to spend around one billion euros ($1.2 billion), according to a Feb 16 report by the Assolombarda business association. The Olympics are forecast to boost 2026 economic growth in Milan by 0.6 percentage points to 1.7 percent, accelerating industrial output in the entire region, the association said during the Games.

Decades of change

Milan's transformation from a provincial city known primarily as an industrial and business center began in the early 2000s, when a wave of redevelopment projects started reshaping its skyline.

The CityLife district emerged around three skyscrapers designed by architects Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Arata Isozaki, while the Porta Nuova development introduced the flagship UniCredit Tower, the city's tallest building at 218 meters, completed in 2012.

Much of this building boom coincided with Expo 2015, which drew 22 million visitors over six months and repositioned Milan as an international tourist destination.

Tourism has grown steadily since, rising 6.5 percent to 9.6 million visitors in 2025, from just over nine million a year earlier.

"Expo 2015 was not an isolated success," said Fiorenza Lipparini, director general of Milano & Partners — YesMilano, the city's promotion agency.

"It marked a systematic shift."

Beyond tourism, Expo 2015 triggered a three billion-euro investment to transform the former Expo site into MIND, a science and technology hub. Since then, the number of five-star hotels has tripled. Milan has added two subway lines and opened a dozen new museums, including Fondazione Prada, MUDEC and Pirelli HangarBicocca.

Yet the city's rapid ascent has also fueled criticism. Housing activists argue that big events and luxury developments catering to wealthy tenants have driven up real estate prices, leaving many workers priced out. They call for policies to fill vacant public housing, create more subsidized housing and incentivize private owners to make available 80,000 uninhabited residences.

"The model of development brought by big events like Expo 2015 and then the Olympics brings private interests that don't trickle down to the people," said Angelo Junior Avelli of the Social Forum dell'Abitare.

Post-Olympics

The Olympic Village has speeded up redevelopment in the southern Porta Romana railyard, next to one of Milan's largest former industrial sites.

The 20-hectare project will deliver 100,000 square meters of housing — about half being social housing under city rules adopted in 2019 — along with parks and public space covering roughly half the site.

After the Games, the athletes' village will be converted into student housing.

The area sits across from Fondazione Prada, one of the first projects to catalyze the regeneration of the former industrial Symbiosis district, emerging as a fashion hub with headquarters for Bottega Veneta and Moncler. A new headquarters for Diesel-owner OTB Group is also under construction nearby.

"Major events can open the interest of the world to the city," said Luca Mangia, general manager of COIMA, the developer behind the Porta Romana and Porta Nuova projects. "We saw that with Expo 2015, and we hope it will happen again with the Olympic Games."

"In this case, the Games allowed us to accelerate construction of the Olympic Village and move forward more quickly with regeneration of the area," Mangia said.

Sporting legacy

Italy's record 30 medals is also expected to reignite interest in winter sports, the way Jannik Sinner's success has promoted tennis, Ruta said. In addition, Olympic organizers are working with companies to encourage employees to get 30 minutes of physical activity each day, a carry-over from the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.

"Athletes inspire everybody to be an everyday athlete,'' said Ruta, with an economic impact translating to such things as ski tickets, equipment sales and hotels.

Already, Milan's convention operator, which hosted two temporary skating venues, has announced that it would maintain a temporary ice rink while it studies a project to add a new, permanent one.

"The Olympics have reignited the enthusiasm and the passion for ice and snow sports — an energy that we don't want to lose,'' Giovanni Bozzetti, president of the Foundation Fiera Milano, said in a social media post.