Worth having a look at the Italian VFR Jepp map and then re-thinking anything that involves Milan. There's an awful lot of very low Class A. There are VFR routes but they seem to meander all over the place. I think there are also special rules for the airspace north of Milan to the mountains - I seem to remember seeing these in the Diverse section of Bottlang for some reason. Suffice to say, I was in Slovenia a couple of weeks back and spent an evening trying to find a suitable VFR route back across Italy to Lyon avoiding Class A and couldn't see any particularly reasonable way of doing it.
That said, as the weather forced me to go east of the Alps, I didn't try - maybe I would have got special VFR direct the whole way - who knows. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of options if you are refused a CAS clearance though.