LOMBARDY - The richest, most highly developed and most densely populated region of Italy. And it is precisely for this that it is one of most surprising and unexpected for the tourist who arrives there knowing little of its historic, architectural, artistic and natural heritage. Let us take Milan, the great city of industry and commerce. Here everything that is modern and advanced finds its home: from technological innovation to fashion, from advertising to design, from ways of life to political "experiments". Milan sets the trend. Yet, beneath its thick aspect of a dynamic and modern metropolis projected towards the future, Milan conceals extraordinary architectural and artistic treasures. There is only the embarrassment of choice: the Duomo, the Castello Sforzesco, the La Scala theatre and the Brera picture gallery. And in the rest of Lombardy there are many splendid natural landscapes (the lakes, the Stelvio national park), and monuments and works of art of considerable value. At Monza, Varese, Como, Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi, Cremona, and Pavia, every era has made its cultural and artistic mark: in the urban structures, in the churches, in the civic buildings. From the Romanesque to the Gothic, from the Renaissance to the Baroque, up to the most daring and innovative architectural and artistic solutions of the modern and contemporary eras: Lombardy boasts an impressive cultural and artistic heritage. And many people have yet to discover all this.