Milan’s Olympic Village and the Legacy of the Games

The Milan–Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics represent one of the most significant sporting and infrastructural events in the country’s recent history. Scheduled to take place from 6 to 22 February 2026, the 25th Winter Olympic Games will be followed, as tradition dictates, by the Paralympic Games, running from 6 to 15 March 2026, completing a month and a half during which Italy will be at the centre of the global sporting stage.

This is a distributed edition that, for the first time, adopts a polycentric configuration: Milan as the urban heart, Cortina d’Ampezzo as the historic symbol of winter sports, and a network of venues spread across Lombardy, Veneto and Trentino–Alto Adige. A model that reflects a contemporary vision of the Games—less focused on a single host city and more oriented toward the enhancement of territories and existing infrastructure.

Within this context, Milan plays a strategic role not only as an international showcase, but also as a laboratory for urban transformation. The Olympics thus become an accelerator for projects designed to extend beyond the event itself, with a keyword recurring throughout every dossier: legacy. It is within this framework that the Porta Romana Olympic Village takes shape, one of the most emblematic interventions of the entire Italian Olympic programme.

The Olympic Village is not “merely” athlete accommodation: it is the first concrete step in Milan’s attempt to transform the former Porta Romana rail yard into a new urban district. A choice that shifts the narrative centre of gravity from the rhetoric of the event to the substance of legacy—what remains afterwards. And here the ambition is explicit: once the Games conclude, those rooms will become Italy’s largest affiliated student residence, offering 1,700 beds and a management model designed to make a tangible impact on the city’s chronic shortage of student housing.

Porta Romana: from rail yard void to urban district

The setting is the large-scale regeneration of the Scalo di Porta Romana (also known as Scalo Romana), a strategic area between the city centre and the south-east, aligned with Corso Lodi and the railway belt. The Municipality frames the intervention within a broader transformation, governed by specific rules and phases: within the Village perimeter, construction was brought forward precisely to meet the Olympic deadline, through a dedicated urban planning process.

In this framework, the Village is conceived as a trigger: not an isolated volume, but a device capable of activating public space, services and connections, while holding together two different timelines—the urgency of the Games and everyday life after 2026.

The Village is being developed by COIMA SGR together with Covivio and Prada Holding—an alliance that speaks to the economic and symbolic weight of the project and to the ambition of positioning it as a threshold project for the future Milan.

Architecturally, the project is designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the Chicago-based firm that envisioned a layout combining newly built residential buildings with the reuse of existing structures, giving the Village not the appearance of a temporary compound but that of an urban fragment already prepared to change function.

The Village form and the central square

The Village consists of six new residential buildings and the renovation of two historic structures on the site (often referred to as the former “Squadra Rialzo” and “Basilico” buildings), transformed into residences and spaces compatible with contemporary use. The guiding idea is to create a recognisable centre: a square and a sequence of collective spaces—courtyards, paths and green areas—designed to function during the event, with its flows, controls and logistics, but above all afterwards, when life will be shaped by daily routines, social interaction, study, sport and neighbourhood services.

Project communications and press coverage converge on one point: the Village has been designed to host more than 1,400 athletes during the Games and then be rapidly converted into student housing. As for timing, COIMA has emphasised delivery well ahead of the event, with residential buildings completed and work focused on outdoor spaces and finishes required specifically for the Olympic period.

If there is one word that recurs insistently, it is sustainability, framed not as a slogan but as a guiding principle behind all process-related decisions. The Village is presented as a project that has relied heavily—particularly for façades—on modularity and prefabrication, a strategy aimed at reducing construction time, site impact and part of the environmental footprint, while ensuring quality and component repeatability.

The post-Games future is already written: a 1,700-bed student residence

The Future Student Residence. Rendering © SOM | Pixelflakes

The political and social crux lies here: once the Olympic chapter closes, the Village will become student housing with 1,700 beds, presented as a structural response to a pressing urban need. COIMA estimates the potential impact at around 6% of Milan’s student housing demand, also pointing to a 25% price difference compared to market rates under the affiliated model.

Within the broader transformation of Scalo Romana, 320 apartments—including affordable housing and public housing—are planned as part of the new district’s residential mix, confirming that the legacy narrative extends beyond students to a wider social composition. Post-2026 housing is expected to be operational as early as the 2026/27 academic year, signalling that the conversion is conceived as a rapid transition rather than a distant promise.

Porta Romana Olympic Village, a credibility test

The Porta Romana Olympic Village is, in essence, a credibility test: of Milan’s ability to deliver projects on time, of the possibility of using the Olympics as an accelerator without producing “white elephants”, and of the willingness to address the delicate issue of housing with a concrete and measurable tool such as a large-scale affiliated student residence.

This directly intersects with one of today’s most pressing urban challenges: housing affordability. Milan has long been one of Italy’s most difficult—and expensive—cities in which to find accommodation for students. Average rents, especially near major universities, are extremely high, placing pressure on families and severely limiting options for those arriving from outside the city.

In this scenario, the entry of 1,700 beds at regulated rates into the market is not just a statistic, but a tangible response to a structural shortage. The Olympic Village does not claim to resolve the entire student housing demand—which remains far greater—but it represents a targeted and significant intervention, capable of easing market pressure and offering quality solutions at more sustainable prices. It is one of the few large-scale operations carried out in recent years with the explicit aim of containing costs for students, while providing liveable, accessible spaces integrated into the city.

Whether it truly works will be revealed in the “after”, when badges, checkpoints and protocols disappear, leaving students, services, maintenance, cost management, spatial quality and integration with the neighbourhood. It is then that an Olympic Village ceases to be a stage set and becomes a city.

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