Inter Milan

Internazionale are, as the name promises, the outward-looking half of Milan. The club was founded in 1908 by a breakaway group who wanted to sign foreign players, splitting from the club that became AC Milan, and that cosmopolitan streak has run through it ever since. The nickname is the Nerazzurri, the black-and-blues, and the recent story is one of the sharpest highs and lows in the game.

Inter have won three European Cups: the Grande Inter side of the mid-1960s, and then José Mourinho's 2010 team, which won the treble, the only Italian club ever to do it. The last two years have been whiplash. In May 2025 Inter reached the Champions League final and were annihilated, losing 5-0 to Paris Saint-Germain in Munich, the heaviest final defeat in the competition's history. Then, within twelve months, they answered it by winning the Italian league and cup double. This is a club that just took the worst night imaginable and turned it into a domestic clean sweep, which tells you something about its resilience.

The ownership is newer and stranger than the badge suggests: the American fund Oaktree Capital took control in 2024 after the previous Chinese owners defaulted on a loan, taking the club over weeks after Inter had clinched a title. And the ground, of course, is the famous one it shares with its bitter rival.

Worth flagging up front: San Siro is living on borrowed time. In late 2025 the city sold the stadium to Inter and Milan jointly, with a plan to build a new ground and partly demolish this one. Nothing has come down yet, but a visit in the late 2020s carries a real "see it while it stands" weight.

Getting there

The easy way to San Siro is the lilac Metro line, the M5, which runs to the San Siro Stadio stop right by the ground. From the centre you'd typically take the M1 to Lotto and change to the M5 for the last couple of stops, about half an hour in all, with extra trains laid on for matches. Coming out is the standard 75,000-people-through-one-station crunch, so buy your return ticket in advance and be patient; some fans walk a stop back toward Lotto to beat the worst of it.

Making a day of it

The area right around San Siro is not a bar district, so the pre-match culture is the Italian one: aperitivo and dinner in the centre, then the metro out. Milan does the early-evening drink-with-snacks ritual better than anywhere, so have a good aperitivo in the middle of the city and ride the M5 out toward kickoff. If you want something by the ground, Old Tenconi is a long-running beer hall near the stadium, and there are a couple of bars right on the stadium piazzale; in town, 4-4-2 (FourFourTwo) is the long-standing football pub, small enough that it's worth booking ahead. The signature San Siro bite is the panino con la salamella, a grilled pork-sausage roll from the paninari trucks around the ground; the famous one is Salamellaz, the Lentini brothers' stall between Gate 0 and Gate 2, an institution the whole city knows.

Inside, Italian rules apply: any beer is limited and served in plastic on the concourse rather than in your seat, and for higher-risk fixtures the city can restrict alcohol sales around the ground.

Inside, and where the noise is

San Siro's atmosphere is a legend, and right now it needs an honest asterisk. On an Inter matchday the home end is the Curva Nord, traditionally the territory of the Boys San and the organised support; away fans, when Milan aren't the tenants that day, go high up in the Curva Sud opposite. The whole thing flips when Milan are at home, which is the strange genius of a stadium shared by two rivals. A practical seating tip from regulars: the second ring, the secondo anello, is the best view for the money, and you want to avoid the lower tiers directly beneath the Curva Nord on a big night, where the choreography goes up in front of you and blocks the pitch.

The asterisk is that Inter's ultras have been in open turmoil. In 2024 the leaders of the Curva Nord were arrested in a major investigation into ticket-touting, extortion and organised-crime links, and the fallout has been a running conflict between the hardcore support and the club's new ownership, including an announced boycott and stretches of deliberate silence for the opening minutes of games, under a sardonic slogan aimed at the rest of the crowd. The upshot for a first-time visitor is that the wall of noise is not guaranteed the way the reputation implies: a big Champions League night can still be spectacular, but a routine league game in this period can be oddly muted. Go in knowing that rather than expecting the myth every time.

The songs

The emotional anthem is "Pazza Inter Amala," crazy Inter, love her, which captures the club's self-image as chaotic and heart-attack-inducing, and which the fans still sing even though it was dropped as the official pre-match walkout track back in 2019. The club's formal anthem now is "C'è solo l'Inter," there is only Inter. If you want the one the crowd actually pours itself into, it's still Pazza Inter.

Merch

The handiest Inter store is in the centre, just off Piazza San Babila near the Duomo, which fits the drink-in-the-centre plan, and there's another store at the stadium itself by one of the gates, open on matchdays. Do the shopping in town rather than making a separate trip out to San Siro.

Getting a ticket

For an ordinary Serie A game this is genuinely manageable. Anyone can set up an account and buy single-match tickets online from the club, and a normal league fixture is usually gettable. The catches are the same as across Italy and worth respecting: tickets are personal, your ID has to match the name on the ticket at the gate, and the cheapest basic tickets can't be transferred to anyone at all. The Derby della Madonnina against Milan and the Champions League knockout nights are a different order, selling out before they reach open sale.

Reselling above face value is illegal in Italy, and because tickets are named, one bought off a stranger or a third-party site can simply fail the check at the turnstile. So buy through the club for a league game, and for a sold-out big one look at official hospitality or an authorised package rather than the grey market.

One last thing

Come partly for San Siro itself, because this vast, steep, spiral-ramped cathedral is one of the great stadiums and it is genuinely condemned, sold off to be replaced within a few years. See it while it stands, take an Inter league game where the ticket is easy, drink your aperitivo in the centre and ride the M5 out, and understand that the famous Curva Nord is going through a strange, quiet chapter. Even muted, a night under those towers is worth the trip.

Ticket rules, the ultras situation and above all the stadium's future are all moving. Check anything time-sensitive the week you travel, and buy every ticket through the club.