Suggested for review by my Dad.

Milan’s Metro has grown since I last reviewed the official map (way back in March 2012), with Line 5 now being open and Line 4 under construction – so a new review is long overdue.

The first thing I noticed is that the suburban lines have all been upgraded to have their own colour-coded route line instead of sharing a common colour as on previous maps. This makes them easier to understand and follow across the map, and certainly highlights the importance of Garibaldi station as the major suburban transportation hub. Garibaldi itself gets a unique diamond station marker and is situated at the dead centre of the map, so it really can’t be missed!

The Metro lines are nice and thick, and now have curves when they change direction instead of a hard corner, which make the map flow a bit better for me. However, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhythm or order to the layout and everything just seems a little messy to me. The angled labels aren’t helping matters, and are particularly unfortunate seeing as previous versions had labels that were all set horizontally. Condensed all-caps labels also aren’t the easiest to read.

Other notes: Quite a few stations seem to have secondary labels for nearby business headquarters – Bluvacanze, Widiba, etc. – though I don’t know if this is informational or as a result of commercial sponsorship deals. Whatever the reason, it’s just another layer of information that makes the map a little more crowded.

The addition of fare zones in fairly bright colours also introduces more visual noise, though it’s probably handled about as well as it could be. Most of the zones only apply to the eastern end of Line 2, though, so maybe there’s a cleaner way to apply this information.

Our final word: Feels a bit loose and unformed to me, though it’s perfectly usable. I always have difficulty relating Milan Metro maps to the historical centre of the city, and this one is no different. Haphazard labelling is probably its biggest downfall.

Source: LineaDiretta/Medium – click through for a brief history of the Milan Metro map from 1985 onwards.