Malpensa began as an airfield on the flat heathland northwest of Milan, back in 1909. The Caproni aircraft company used the open scrubland there to test its very first experimental aircraft designs. It served military purposes for decades afterward. Milan then developed it as a civil airport in the late 1940s, though Linate, much closer to the city center, long carried most of Milan's traffic.
The big change was the Malpensa 2000 project, a big rebuilding plan for the whole airport. A huge new Terminal 1 opened in 1998 along with a fast rail link to the city. Italian officials pushed most long haul and connecting flights away from Linate, making Malpensa the northern hub, meaning a central connecting airport, for Alitalia. The plan never fully worked out as intended.
Alitalia struggled, and in 2008 it broke up its Malpensa hub to focus on Rome Fiumicino, stripping the airport of many flights almost overnight. Low cost carriers filled the gap, with easyJet building its largest base outside Britain. Malpensa remade itself around leisure travel and long haul flights run by foreign airlines. It is Italy's largest cargo airport, and in 2024 it was renamed Milan Malpensa Silvio Berlusconi Airport.