Fallon Milan — Practical ground-level Milan: the ATM | fallonmilan.com

How much is a Milan metro ticket?

Between roughly €1.50 and €2.50 for the ordinary 90-minute ticket — the exact price shifts with the year and the ticket type.

The ordinary ticket is the unit everything else is measured against. Once stamped, it runs for 90 minutes anywhere on the network — all five metro lines, the trams and the buses, in every zone. A bus ticket is the same ticket: it works for a metro journey, and a metro ticket works on a bus.

Above it sit two unlimited passes: the 24-hour pass at about €7–8 and the 7-day pass at about €20–23. The arithmetic matters. If your sightseeing fits inside one or two 90-minute windows — down to the Duomo, across to Brera, back — single tickets usually cost less than a day pass, especially if you stay underground and let each stamp carry you for the full 90 minutes.

The full fare breakdown, zone by zone, is on the tickets and zones page. Prices move between years, so treat the figures here as the current structure rather than a to-the-cent promise.

Which zone do you need for the Duomo?

Zone 1 — and the ordinary ticket already includes it, so there is nothing extra to buy.

Zone 1 is the city centre, and the cathedral square is the middle of it. Duomo station, served by lines M1 and M3, is the nearest metro stop, about five minutes on foot from the cathedral itself. Any ordinary ticket stamped anywhere on the network covers the ride.

Zone 2 covers the inner ring suburbs and zone 3 the outer area. Because the ordinary 90-minute ticket is valid anywhere on the network, the zones matter less for buying a ticket than for reading the map: most visitors never leave zone 1 in a day of sightseeing.

The one place zones and tickets genuinely separate is the airport run. Regional trains to Malpensa are sold separately by Trenord, and the ordinary ATM ticket does not cover them — details on the airport routes page.

Stamp it once: the validation routine

A paper ticket is valid only after it is stamped — an unstamped ticket counts as no ticket at all.

Validation starts the 90-minute clock. The machines are yellow-orange and sit at the top and bottom of metro escalators and at tram and bus stops, so you stamp before you ride, not after.

Most fines visitors collect come from a short list of repeatable mistakes, and every one of them is avoidable.

• Step 1 — Buy before you board: paper tickets come from station machines and kiosks; there is no buying from inspectors.
• Step 2 — Find the yellow-orange machine: at the top or bottom of the metro escalators, or at the tram or bus stop.
• Step 3 — Stamp once and check the print: the stamp starts your 90 minutes, and stamping a second time does not extend anything.
• Step 4 — Keep the ticket to the end of the ride: inspectors treat an unstamped or discarded ticket as travelling without one.
• Typical failure — the airport assumption: a stamped ATM ticket is not valid on Trenord trains to Malpensa; those are a separate purchase.
• Typical failure — the fresh-ticket mistake: carrying a valid but unstamped ticket still counts as travelling without a valid ticket.