Panettone is Milan's tall sourdough Christmas cake: a slow-fermented enriched dough with butter, eggs, candied orange and citron, and raisins, baked in a cylindrical paper mould and hung upside down to cool so the crumb

The panettone took shape in 15th-century Milan and the modern industrial form was codified by Angelo Motta in 1919, who introduced the tall cylinder shape and the long natural-yeast fermentation. Gioacchino Alemagna built the rival Milan brand in 1925; both were merged into Nestle in the 1970s. The artisan revival of the 1990s onward, led by Iginio Massari and Davide Longoni, returned the panettone to 48-hour natural-yeast leavens and small-batch baking. Marchesi 1824, Pasticceria Cova, Olivieri 1882 and Pave all bake canonical Christmas versions; a 1kg pasticceria panettone runs 40 to 80 euros, an industrial supermarket loaf 15 to 25.

5 editor picks for Panettone in Milan, ranked by editorial score. All Milan signature dishes · Panettone across every city.