A century after Milan’s Chinese community first put down roots between via Canonica and via Paolo Sarpi (see our article on the History of the Milanese Chinatown), the city has taken its first formal step toward a permanent Paifang (牌坊 monumental Chinese gate)!
In July 2026, Milan’s municipal government, the Giunta, approved the guidelines for a public call covering the design, financing, and construction of the city’s first Chinatown gate, at the piazzale Baiamonti end of the street.
However, this is not a gate yet, nothing has been designed, funded, or scheduled, and any selected proposal still has to clear public-interest and technical-feasibility reviews. But compared with every earlier attempt, which never left the group chat, this is the most concrete step Milan has ever taken toward a Chinatown gate. And the timing, in the neighborhood’s centenary year, could hardly be better.
Chinatown gate in Melbourne, Australia
It also doesn’t land in a vacuum. Between the gate and the social housing project planned between Sarpi and Bramante, this looks less like a one-off gesture and more like part of a broader plan to invest in the neighborhood.
What the city actually approved
Let’s be precise, because “Milan is building a Chinese arch” is not what happened. What Palazzo Marino approved are the linee di indirizzo, the framework for a public call for proposals. Public and private entities will be able to submit a complete package: a design plus a financial plan. The city will then evaluate submissions internally, and even the selected proposal must pass further reviews before construction can begin.
So this is bureaucracy, yes. But it’s the load-bearing kind. Every previous conversation about a Chinatown gate in Milan died at the “nice idea” stage. This one has a paper trail, an assessora attached to it (Gaia Romani, who announced the move), and a location on the map. In Italian administrative terms, that’s practically a ribbon cutting.
Chinatown gate in Vancouver, Canada
Proposals will be judged on architectural and artistic quality, fit with the urban context, economic sustainability, feasibility, durability, a maintenance plan, and community involvement. Translation: something beautiful that won’t fall apart, won’t bankrupt anyone, and won’t be designed over the heads of the people who live and work on Sarpi.
What we still don’t know
Worth keeping in plain sight before anyone starts planning the inauguration banquet:
- No design exists. The call hasn’t even been published yet; that’s expected in the coming weeks.
- No date. There is no construction timeline or opening estimate.
- No budget. Cost and funding source depend entirely on the proposals submitted.
- No guarantee. Participating in the call gives no right to build, and the city can still stop the project at the review stage.
Chinese gate in Dunedin, New Zealand
Why 2026 matters
Milan’s Chinatown turns 100 this year. The first documented traces of the community date back to reports from March 1926, and the neighborhood has spent the whole centenary hosting events, installations, and exhibitions. A gate approved in any other year would be news. A gate process launched in the centenary year reads as a statement: after a hundred years, the city is formally recognizing the entrance to one of its most distinctive neighborhoods.
We’ve been here before: the 2015 flashback
If this sounds familiar, your memory is fine. In 2015, during Expo, the Italy-China entrepreneurs’ association proposed installing two temporary twin paifang on Sarpi. The project was criticized, revised along the way, and finally shelved over costs.
The difference now is context. Sarpi in 2026 is not Sarpi in 2015, let alone the wholesale corridor of the early 2000s. The 2010–2011 pedestrianization turned the street into a busy walking corridor, the institutional dialogue with the community is stronger, Municipio 1 is even twinned with Shanghai’s Jing’an district, and the request for a gate has been on the table for years.
Paifang gate in Summer Palace of Beijing, China
The tricky part: that corner
The chosen spot is genuinely charged. The Baiamonti entrance sits between Porta Volta, the Monumentale cemetery, late-19th-century facades, and the site of the long-planned Museum of the Resistance designed by Herzog & de Meuron, with a sightline toward the Porta Nuova skyline. Whatever gets built will be in conversation with all of that at once.
A generic historicist replica would feel disconnected from the streetscape it’s supposed to crown. Done right, a Milanese paifang could honor a century of Chinese Milanese history and still feel like it belongs on this street, in this city.
Paifang 101, minus the lecture
A paifang (牌坊), also called a pailou (牌樓), is a traditional Chinese archway: two or more pillars, connecting beams, usually a tiled roof, and an inscribed plaque telling you where you are or who is being honored. The form goes back centuries and became widespread under the Ming and Qing dynasties, marking the entrances to districts, temples, and important sites. In the diaspora it picked up a second job, telling the world “the Chinatown starts here.” That’s the version Milan is now considering.
San Francisco’s Dragon Gate
The gates that came before
Milan wouldn’t be inventing anything, it would be joining a club with some serious members. We’ve already ranked the best Chinatowns in the world, so consider us qualified judges here. Los Angeles’ New Chinatown, opened in 1938, was the world’s first master-planned Chinatown rather than a neighborhood that developed organically around an immigrant community. It is also often credited with having one of the earliest modern Chinatown gateways.
San Francisco’s Dragon Gate, standing at the Grant Avenue entrance since 1970, is one of the world’s most recognizable Chinatown gates. London unveiled its grand Qing-style gate on Wardour Street in 2016, proof that even a compact Chinatown wedged between Soho theaters can pull off a ceremonial entrance.
Chinatown Gate Los Angeles 1938
But does a Chinatown actually need a gate?
The case against is not trivial. Chinatown gates have long been criticized as Disneyfication: a decorative shorthand that flattens a living neighborhood into a photogenic theme, often designed with tourists rather than residents in mind.
The case for a gate is quieter and, we would argue, stronger. For a century, Milan’s Chinese community has been part of the city without its presence ever being formally inscribed into the urban landscape. A paifang is the city saying, in stone and in public, that this neighborhood is a permanent part of Milan.
Chinatown Gate in Soho London, UK
Such gates often become landmarks, meeting points, and visible symbols of a city’s multicultural identity. If it is designed with the community rather than merely for it, there is no reason Sarpi’s paifang should be any different.
We’ll be watching the public call like it’s a HBO drama series. Follow @chinatownmilano.it for every episode.
