A BLUEPRINT FOR: MILAN
Milan has quickly become one of my favorite cities in the world… here’s my playbook when I visit.
This guide is a partnership with Chase Sapphire Reserve, who care about travel the way I do. Not as a transaction, but as a way to see more clearly. We share the belief that the best trips are the ones that change the way you look at everything when you come home. Milan does that for me, every single time.
Wearstlerworld,
Milan is a totally beguiling city… and I was just back again for its design week, launching my collection with H&M Home (which was such an incredible experience, and last week I shared a lot of the BTS of how we brought it together).
From Milan’s architecture (imposing, detailed, impressive), to its restaurants, galleries, and just the way design histories and futures find their way into every corner of the city… it makes this one of my favorite places to be. And I wanted to share the spaces in this city that make it, for me, an endless source of inspiration.
MY MILAN
I’m up before the city. (Usually the case, wherever I am… but definitely here.)
By 5 a.m. I’m out running, camera in hand, taking pictures of absolutely everything… in the half light of the morning, you sort of see the proportions before the people, and so details and aspects change and reveal themselves as you approach: a doorway, a stone threshold, a bronze handle, a courtyard. By the time the cafés open and the first espresso hits the counter, I’ve already sent about 1000 images back to the studio.
Half my best ideas live in the photos I take before breakfast… no better lesson in shape, scale, and atmosphere than an empty Italian church at 7 a.m.
The museums here, from the Pinacoteca to the Fondazione Prada to Villa Necchi, are total masterclasses in how art and architecture can live in conversation. And furniture galleries here treat 20th century Italian design the way other cities treat Old Masters: with total reverence, scholarship, and also little drama. Gio Ponti, Carlo Scarpa, Gae Aulenti, Osvaldo Borsani, Cini Boeri. They were the best; they really shook up the design world… and in lots of ways, they still do.
The pleasure of Milan is coexistence: of past and future, of discipline and rebellion.
Plus, I always come home with one vintage wallpaper roll, one piece of vintage I’ll wear forever. The sign, for me, of a successful trip.
STAY
The hotel scene in Milan is strong, and getting stronger… like so many storied European cities, there’s an unbelievable mix of tradition and modernity, and also always many more "coming soon." I stay at The Portrait Milano, but I think even the city’s newer hotels, like the latest Rocco Forte collection property, The Carlton, manage to pull from the city’s super elegant design history. Fresher openings often have more of a wellness and fitness offering, which is important to me, so I often lean towards these…
The Portrait surrounds a spacious courtyard just off the end of Via della Spiga, and is home to Milan’s Beefbar and the 10_11 restaurant that spills out into a beautiful garden. Both have incredible service. Baha, who is their Hospitality Ambassador Concierge, and Gabriele, a guest assistant, were out of this world, honestly. Always a step ahead of me.
A big reason I stayed was that it’s part of The Edit by Chase Travel, which… as a Sapphire Reserve cardmember… gives you perks. And, I don’t refuse perks. Complimentary breakfast every morning, which for me is a green juice… a $100 property credit I can put toward a dinner or treatment (The Portrait has an amazing spa, the Longevity Spa)… and room upgrades (when available).
You can see all of that here. Since being a member, I can tell you I’ve never looked back.
STAY
The Portrait Milano: This was maybe my fourth time staying at the Portrait Milano… and the former-16th-century-seminary setting is so peaceful (though during Design Week here, there’s a special buzz). Plus, Michele Bönan suites bridge the gap from the Renaissance to the 20th-century. The spa and the gym are incredible, with everything you need… pool, sauna, cryotherapy. Plus, I love how you can step out and have the best access to the shops and the entire Quadrilatero della Moda.
STRAF : Vincenzo De Cotiis designed this one… concrete, black slate, scratched mirrors, burnished brass. It has a real Arte Povera spirit that feels very raw and intentional.
The Carlton: Interior design by Olga Polizzi and Paolo Moschino. It’s where Art Deco meets warm burnished tones… it has a very private-residence feel.
OPENINGS ON MY MIND
Lots of amazing new properties on the horizon in Milan, that are worth noting if your trip isn’t imminent… the new JK Place Milano, again a Michele Bönan design, the Six Senses Milan, across from the Pinacoteca, by Tara Bernerd & Partners, and the METT Milan Torre Velasca… a huge moment for the city… the post-war modernist icon by BBPR is being meticulously restored and this will be a chance to experience it from the inside.
EAT & DRINK
A big part of how I travel is experiencing the hospitality and design of the restaurants I love. As a Chase Sapphire Reserve cardmember, I earn 3x points on dining worldwide.
Italy is one of the best countries for food, and even within that context, Milan stands out. Its restaurants, patisseries, cafés have two moods… really amazing, sleek, edgy new players are sometimes just across the street from magnetic, humming institutions that have defined the city for decades. Giacomo has the vibe of a private club; at Bice, the best branzino in the city is deboned at the table as a bit of drama and theatre; and then at Trattoria del Ciumbia, you feel Milan step into a new version of itself, blending iconic designs with very fresh new ones.
- MODERN
PASTICCERIA
LA BRUMA: a contemporary pastry counter with a clean-lined fit-out and stripped-back finishes. No nostalgia here, just great form.
Via Stampa: Located on Via Stampa 8 in Carrobbio, it’s bright, and spacious, and spare, but with so much texture from the wood bar, the parquet floors, and the Lombard seasonal menu.
LUNCH
LúBar: Right next to the Gallery of Modern Art (GAM), with a beautiful terrace and neoclassical architecture, perfect for a midday rest and refuel especially when the weather is good. The Indro Montanelli Garden in front is stunning.
Nebbia: Hushed and neutral. Raw plaster and pale wood ensure there is zero distraction from the artistry on the plate.
Sandì: Pared-back, super clean and has nods to an industrial aesthetic, and has really taken Milan by storm. I feel like everyone during Design Week had just been or was about to go.
COFFEE
Atelier Prato: A flower shop and café hybrid. I love how the blooms bring a seasonality into the space, and an incredible scent.
Eris: A cool, young vibe, and always something going on… pop-ups and collabs that mean Eris is a place for more than just a caffeine hit.
APPERITIVO
Bar Luce: Wes Anderson designed space at the Fondazione Prada, with a pink terrazzo and a pastel palette, referencing 1950s Milanese cafés.
Enoteca Cotti: A historic wine shop with wood-paneled walls, bottles floor to ceiling.
DINNER
Langosteria: This is an amazing seafood restaurant on Via Savona. It’s a glamorous, intimate, highly decorated dining room. The Sea Bream arrived on a silver platter, before the fish was cooked. The spaghetti alle vongole is some of the best, if not the best, I’ve ever had.
Trattoria del Ciumbia Dimorestudio: Designed by Dimorestudio, opaline ceiling lights in liver-red panels, custom mosaic tile floors, and Castiglioni lamps… such fantastic design, and the food lives up to it.
DRINKS
Bar Nico: Sagoma Studio created this altar-like concrete-and-steel counter in a former tire shop. It feels very much like an Edward Hopper painting, in good ways.
Mogo: In a former brewery, converted by Giorgia Longoni Studio with a 360-degree central bar anchoring the room.
Balay: Studiomille kept the original patterned tile floors and distressed plaster here. They layered dark wood and metal on top, and the counter doubles as a DJ booth.
- TRADITIONAL
PASTICCERIA
Marchesi 1824: I went here with my team, plus Richard and Harvey from Flamingo Estate. Richard is obsessed with this patisserie, which is one of the oldest in Milan. Miuccia Prada ended up buying a majority stake, as part of how she wants to give back to her hometown, and preserve its culture… since, they’ve expanded it, bringing us new outposts.
Pasticceria Cucchi: This 1936 café-concert still has furnishings that were last updated in 1954… Marni took it over during Design Week this year, if that sort of tells you a bit about its cachet.
LUNCH
A Santa Lucia: These rooms have been maintained exactly as they were in the 1930s. The walls are dense with celebrity photographs and the staff still wears classic white jackets.
Antica Trattoria della Pesa: Open since 1880, and still a hot spot. Dark wood boiserie, a majolica-tiled corner stove, and all of its original vintage signage… fantastic.
APERITIVO
Camparino in Galleria: 1915 Liberty interior details an ebony bar and mosaic floors on the square of Milan’s insanely beautiful Duomo, so always a nice first-day stop in the city to remind yourself where you are.
Four Seasons Garden: A courtyard garden of a converted 15th-century convent. It is cloistered, beautifully planted, and feels discreetly grand.
DINNER
Da Giacomo: Designed by Renzo Mongiardino, at the entrance you’ll see the catches of the day so beautifully displayed over ice. The pistachio-colored walls are totally signature.
And the ‘Giacomo’ universe has really been brought to many other corners of the city: Giacomo Arengario: a restaurant designed by Studio Peregalli inside the Museo del Novecento. Giacomo Caffè: inside the Palazzo Reale. Giacomo Tabaccheria: an all-day bar and deli on Via Sottocorno 5. Pasticceria Giacomo: this is the pastry workshop for the whole group. There is no seating here, so you should take your treat over to the Tabaccheria.
Bacaro: Hidden off Via Montenapoleone through a passage, into an intimate, cozy courtyard. I went here to have dinner with my team and H&M Home’s team, dining al fresco. Fresh cheese, beef carpaccio, warm bread, and pasta that just melts in your mouth. The artichoke plate was a standout. We sat at a long dinner table, making us feel like one big Italian family.
Sant Ambroeus: The 1936 original was redesigned in 2022 by Fabrizio Casiraghi. It features forest green walls, mosaic floors, and stunning Murano chandeliers. Flamingo Estate hosted a dinner here and made the most insane Principessa Cake I’ve seen.
DRINKS
Bar Basso: Opened in 1947 and the decor hasn’t changed since the ‘60s. Pink walls, crystal chandeliers… it’s a genuine time capsule.
MY GO-TO ORDER
I always seem to order spaghetti alle vongole… which is so simple and delicate, but also tricky, so it’s a real testament to a restaurant when they do it well. My favorites in the city: Da Giacomo and Langosteria.
GELATO
Three names for the best gelato in Milan. Marghera, Giusto, and Pavé. I love them for different reasons, and I make time for all three.
SHOP
Of course Milan as a major “design city” extends into its identity as a fashion capital, alongside Paris as a leader in the industry. And, that also means there is great vintage here.
Unlike some other cities, a lot of its luxury shopping is along a really intimate, pedestrianized street… or in very special places like 10 Corso Como, founded by Carla Sozzani, that is a total oasis.
VINTAGE FASHION
I always come home with at least one piece I’ll wear for the rest of my life. That’s the real measure of vintage.
Bivio: This shop consists of several rooms where the clothes are well-ordered in an industrial rail-and-rack format.
DMAG: A multi-floor designer outlet that has been around since 1990. They carry over 200 brands at a discount and the labels are organized perfectly by brand.
VIA DELLA SPIGA
Via della Spiga is my favorite pedestrian street. Here, 19th-century facades frame boutiques where architecture is as considered as the product, and Nilufar Gallery at no. 32 Via della Spiga is a must-visit. The intimate rooms mix mid-century masterpieces with emerging designers, such amazing curation by Nina Yashar.
On the street:
Tivioli: If you want to splurge on a world-class Italian leather jacket, you go here. No alternatives.
Marsèll: This shoe shop was designed by Lotto Studio using travertine and Brenta river cement walls. The minimalist style was a perfect pairing to their simple-but-striking shoes and bags.
DEPARTMENT STORE
La Rinascente: This department store features ten floors of luxury, across from the Duomo. The food hall on the top floor has a honeycomb acrylic ceiling that glows amber.
Nano Bleu: This is a historic toy shop near the Duomo that has been around since the 1950s. The atmosphere is unchanged since, and of course I had to stop in to get a gift for Crosby.
CONCEPT STORE
10 Corso Como: Founded by Carla Sozzani, this store was recently reworked by 2050+, and is really an absolutely must-see for its warren of shopping and gallery spaces, it’s blending of architecture and graphic design and display and fashion, and for a glass of wine in their garden.
BOOKS
Bookshop Mondadori Electa at Triennale:Designed by Patricia Urquiola, you should not miss this when you go to the Triennale (which you must do). A great selection of design books.
Milano Fashion Library: Located at Via Alessandria 8, the 500-square-meter loft is Europe’s largest fashion archive. It contains over 75,000 publications from the 1850s onward to peruse and some to buy.
FASHION
Milan is a true home to fashion… Prada, Bottega Veneta, Marni… the energy is real here, in a way similar to Paris. But there are also a lot of smaller brands and shops that have nestled into the city, challenge it, and give it some amazing diversity and texture.
Uma Wang: This is the brand’s first store outside of China. It is an apartment-style boutique in Brera with parquet floors and understated, intimate wall tones.
Antonia: The most incredible curation of emerging and established designers. It’s inspiring. And, the merchandising was noteworthy in and of itself. Plus, having one of the locations in my hotel, The Portrait Milano, was convenient and a little dangerous.
Lorenzi Milano: A family-owned business located in the Palazzo Bolchini, right next to our H&M Home show at Palazzo Acerbi, so it was something I just stumbled upon. I had known about this brand before but they have everything from wooden hair brushes to amazing, sculptural scissors. I bought some gold-and-metallic scissors melded into the shape of a crane, just perfect as a gift.
DESIGN
Officina Antiquaria: This 140-square-meter space on Via Scaldasole hosts decorative arts and design from the 16th century to the 20th.
Raimondo Garau: A large, bright showroom that has been run by Garau since the 1980s, and I think he’s a master at arrangements and even just for that, it’s an inspirational place for me to visit.
Spazio RT: Founded by Antonio and Jacopo Tabarelli de Fatis, it’s a design firm and showroom that is another impressive dialogue between historical design and contemporary furniture… a real Milanese skill.
GALLERIES, DESIGN, AND ARCHITECTURE
Milan has been producing the most incredible galleries, palazzos, and villas for centuries… and the details are so layered, the staircases, the floor patterns, the gates. (We hosted our H&M launch in the amazing Palazzo Acerbi, which had never been used during Milan Design Week before!)
But it’s really Aldo Rossi who is Milan to me. Born here, trained here, theorized here, built here. His book The Architecture of the City reframed the way a generation looked at the urban fabric, and his drawings, his Alessi pieces, his Gallaratese housing, all carry that same Milanese instinct for memory, archetype, and form.
He also designed Monument to Sandro Pertini in the Piazza Croce Rossa… and you can feel his hand in every inch. The pink and grey Candoglia, the geometry, the way the light falls through the slit in the cube. Architecture as total poetry. I never walk past it without slowing down.
And, don’t leave Milan without paying respect to Memphis. What Sottsass and the group did in 1981 is still the most radical thing in any room they touch. Color, laminate, geometry, irreverence. Design with a sense of humor and a sense of self. One of my favorite movements of all time.
GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS
Triennale Milano: This is the ultimate design and art museum in Milan. There’s never-ending design inspiration… Giovanni Muzio’s 1933 Palazzo dell’Arte in Parco Sempione… rational, monumental, and designed as a flexible modular container. The recently renovated ground floor by Luca Cipelletti restored Muzio’s original restaurant rooms.
Dimoregallery: My good friend Britt Moran, one of Dimore’s founders, was in the space and showed me around. This used to be an old bank on Via San Vittore al Teatro… down in the original basement vault, the safe opens to the preserved space-turned-atelier shop and is an amazing, cinematic warren of rooms.
Sforza Castle: BBPR oversaw the postwar museum conversion of this 15th-century fortress… medieval brick volumes house Michelangelo’s last Pietà.
Massimo De Carlo: This is a Portaluppi gem from 1934. The restoration reveals eight rooms of mixed colored marble and a spiral staircase originally designed for the 1933 Triennale.
Gió Marconi: Kuehn Malvezzi converted a backyard workshop into these gallery rooms. You reach them through a beautiful sequence of courtyards.
Nilufar Depot: A former silverware factory, this is where I always go to find new pieces for my upcoming design projects. The curation of artists… I’m always in awe of what they have. I saw the most insane ceiling lamp by Flora Lechner, an Austrian designer out of Vienna. The tapestries caught my attention… incredible jewel-toned drapes by Polish designer Sonia Górecka… influential in every way.
Pirelli HangarBicocca: This contemporary art museum is located in a former locomotive factory. Three distinct spaces unfold across 15,000 square meters… the Shed (red brick), Cubo (main exhibitions), and Navate, a 30-metre-high hall containing Anselm Kiefer’s incredible Seven Heavenly Palaces.
Pinacoteca di Brera: In Brera Palace from 1776. Between the monumental courtyard with a Canova statue of Napoleon Bonaparte and interiors gradually renewed while retaining historic room proportions, it remains one of Italy’s great painting collections… Raphael, Caravaggio, and Mantegna.
MUBA – Museo dei Bambini: Milan’s Children’s museum is inside the Rotonda di Via Besana, an 18th-century deconsecrated baroque church with a soaring dome and stone columns… it is now a minimalist, child-scaled installation space by BDGS Architetti.
Fumagalli & Dossi: This is an amazing plaster workshop tucked in a historic courtyard. The fine chalk dust and super patinated walls remain entirely unchanged.
DESIGN AND ART FOUNDATIONS
Fondazione Prada: This OMA/Koolhaas project is set on a former 1910s gin distillery. It consists of seven existing buildings plus three new ones, including a pavilion clad in 24-karat gold leaf and a tower with a pink onyx elevator… really a sight.
Achille Castiglioni Foundation: Studio museum, guided tours only. Piazza Castello 27; Castiglioni’s working studio preserved exactly as it was… drafting boards, prototypes, his collection of anonymous found objects, the Zanotta Bramante table at the center, guided by his wife and daughter.
Fondazione Sozzani: Carla Sozzani’s photography and fashion foundation, now headquartered in Bovisa… industrial former factory space hosting archives, a dedicated photography library, and a changing program.
Fondazione Luigi Rovati: Mario Cucinella carved these subterranean domed galleries from 30,000 individually cut Pietra Serena stone segments. The architecture references Etruscan tombs of Cerveteri beneath a renovated 19th-century palazzo.
Franco Albini Foundation: Newly relocated to Via Saffi… the archive of Italian Rationalism’s most understated master, 22,000 drawings, visit by appointment.
VILLAS AND HOUSE MUSEUMS
Osvaldo Borsani Home: The current owner of Osvaldo Borsani’s flat gave us a private tour during our time at design week… we showed up unannounced, I must admit. Walking through the incredible space, the sculptural fireplace with banquette seating is unlike anything I’ve ever seen… the dark wood lacquered hallways, the stairwell painted in red, marble steps, custom metal railings. The Italians just get it right… every time.
Villa Borsani: Located north of Milan in Varedo, this was Osvaldo Borsani’s 1943 rationalist family home. It showcases a Lucio Fontana fireplace and a Candoglia marble staircase which is incredible.
Villa Necchi Campiglio: This 1935 rationalist villa by Portaluppi shares an arabescato marble base, a lapis lazuli table, and tartan-pattern marble floors. There is even a star window in the toilet… it famously served as a film set for “I Am Love”.
Casa Museo Boschi di Stefano: This house museum is a Portaluppi-designed apartment. The entire second floor is still configured as collectors Antonio Boschi and Marieda Di Stefano left it, with walls dense with De Chirico, Fontana, and Boccioni.
Milan has truly become one of my favorite cities in the world. What didn’t I include in my guide that I should check out next time I’m there?
Ciao, for now, Milano.
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I recently moved to Milan from Rome.
You captured the reasons I love this misunderstood/underrated city.
Love it!