The market takes its name from the cry of children — oh how lovely, in Milanese dialect — at the toys a papal envoy handed out in 1510 to win over a city that had received him coldly. It is now four days of stalls selling crafts, antiques, roast chestnuts and vin brulé, held around the Castello Sforzesco since it moved from the basilica of Sant'Ambrogio.
No attendance figure is published.
The date sits around 7 December, Sant'Ambrogio, which is a public holiday in Milan and the same day as the Scala opening — the city's single densest cultural day, and the reason the first week of December is the hardest week of the Milan winter to book.
It is sometimes catalogued in November, and sometimes listed twice under both its dialect name and the saint's.
PlanningFixed around 7 December, the same day as the Scala opening — not November.