How ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Turned Milan Into a Real-Life Tourist Destination

Movie sequels rarely leave a mark on the cities where they’re filmed, but ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ is proving to be a genuine exception. Months after its theatrical release, the fashion sequel is still generating measurable ripple effects far beyond the box office, this time showing up in Milan’s tourism numbers.

The film, which brought Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt back together, spent part of its production transforming Milan’s fashion district into an open-air film set. That decision to root the story’s climactic act in Italy’s fashion capital, rather than keeping the franchise confined to New York, appears to be paying off in ways that extend well past ticket sales.

According to a new analysis, pedestrian traffic from international visitors at the film’s main Milan locations has risen 18% compared to the previous period, with the increase showing up across every single area studied. The findings come from the Confcommercio Milano Lodi Monza Brianza Research Centre, using data gathered through the Cities Analytics platform.

The increase wasn’t evenly distributed across the city. Cairoli–Palazzo Clerici saw the sharpest jump at 28%, followed by Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II–Duomo at 17%, Brera at 14%, and Montenapoleone at 13%. Each of these locations played a visible role in the film, with Via Montenapoleone and its boutiques serving as some of the movie’s most recognizable backdrops.

Filming took place in Milan across ten days in October 2025, timed to coincide with Fashion Week itself. That timing allowed production to blend seamlessly into the city’s existing fashion calendar, with the Palazzo Parigi Hotel and scenes shot around Piazza della Scala and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II standing out as key locations, alongside sequences in Brera that involved more than 2,000 extras.

Confcommercio’s data also breaks down where these visitors are coming from. Between May 1 and July 26, just over half of foreign visitors to the analyzed areas came from European Union countries, while the remainder arrived from outside the EU, with the United States leading as the top overseas market across every location studied.

The scale of the impact goes beyond footfall percentages at individual landmarks. Marco Barbieri, secretary general of Confcommercio Lodi Monza Brianza, described the findings as confirmation of a structural growth trend in international tourism across central Milan, noting that foreign visitors have been increasing by an average of 28,500 people per month.

Based on that trajectory, roughly 1.5 million international tourists are expected to visit central Milan during the summer quarter spanning July, August, and September, with more than 451,000 of those arrivals projected for August alone. That’s a notable shift for a month that has historically seen the city thin out considerably as locals head off on summer holidays.

The film’s box office performance likely helped fuel that visibility. ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ opened to $220.6 million domestically and $691.4 million globally against a $100 million budget, before going on to post Disney’s biggest live-action streaming premiere since ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ when it hit Disney+ and Hulu in July.

With high-profile cameos from figures like Donatella Versace and a live-shot Dolce & Gabbana fashion show woven into the story, the sequel didn’t just borrow Milan’s aesthetic, it embedded the city directly into its narrative as fashion’s new center of gravity. Given how effectively that choice appears to be translating into real-world tourism, it’s a strategy other fashion-adjacent productions may want to study closely.

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