As if the fashion industry needed another incentive to visit Italy's most fashionable city, a brand-new establishment has just opened with everything required for a stay in the city center.  

Why choose the Portrait Milan Hotel?  

This historic restoration of Europe's oldest seminary is not just the city's most prestigious and daring new luxury hotel; it is also the third of Leonardo Ferragamo's Portrait triptych, which is located off Italy's main retail thoroughfares. It represents Milan's transformation into one of the most interconnected hubs of culture and lifestyle in post-Brexit Europe.  

Italy's now-leafy design hub has evolved over the past ten years from a dull business haze to a dashing modern feather in the country's crown. With a slew of museum expansions, "centralissimo" eateries, and a second wave of hotel developments, it's a weekend must-do that's only a five-minute whoosh on the city's high-speed sustainable metro from Linate Airport.  

Portrait With the renovation of this baroque monastic institution tucked away in the celebrated Fashion Quadrilateral, Milan places tourists at its literal, mystical, and luxurious heart. In December 2022, Milan's mayor officially opened the large private courtyard (a cut-through across the 1.7 km Napoleonic retail area, a global competitor to Bond Street and Fifth Avenue) as a new public piazza. The building's ground level is slated to become a new Milanese playground with a who's who of successful Italian restaurants, spas, and fashion brands.  

Italy's Portrait Milano hotel lobby  

Prepare the scene  

With the seminary, which was commissioned in 1565 by the Archbishop of Milan and future saint Charles Borromeo, Leonardo Ferragamo made a return to his opulent architectural roots. The Lungarno Collection, a collection of carefully chosen four-star hotels established in 1995 on the banks of the Arno, evolved from Florence's pre-Renaissance Palazzo Feroni Spini, a Gothic palace that is still the home of Salvatore Ferragamo. Here, the eponymous shoe designer once entertained pre-war Hollywood clients with hotelier-like charm. Leonardo, Salvatore's son, is currently the fashion house's chairman.  

The two businesses, his hotels, and his fashion firm have always been managed independently by Leonardo, chicly dodging the overt branding of Fendi and Bulgari. Instead, he chooses to celebrate modern Italy with handmade flair at his Portrait hotels, Lungarno's opulent wing that promises a personalized "view" of its home city. Invoking the Dolce Vita era at Portrait Rome and Pitti Palace's fashion heyday at Portrait Florence, designer Michele Bonan, Florence's gentleman master of townhouse hotels, channeled through the impeccable heritage of Ferragamo with the attention to detail of a Florentine couturier and refined Tuscan craftsmanship - all under the sheen of old world Hollywood glamour.  

Italian bathroom at Portrait Milano  

At Portrait Milan, he focuses on the period the seminary was influenced by Milan's design heyday, when it was refurbished by renowned rationalist Piero Portaluppi, whose work, along with that of architect and design great Gio Ponti, helped to create post-war Milan. The square stone arches of the adjoining Villa Necchi Campiglio, which Portaluppi constructed in 1935, enclose the hotel lobby and library. Lamps are utilized in rows and groups of four to resemble ancient columns. Beyond the library into the restaurant, a sliding installation of oval stone columns serves as a space divider with geometric walnut boiserie walls and leather-piped tweed upholstery, two nine-foot-long bamboo and giraffe-like hammered bronze bars.  

Rattan, along with bronze and black lacquer, are materials that Bonan chose to utilize as a homage to the oriental influences on designs from the Art Deco era and the Salvatore Ferragamo museum. A common theme at the hotel is education and archives, and the library offers a substantial collection of books on Milanese art and design. Salvatore Ferragamo's sculptural shoe designs, advances based on his research of human anatomy, hang next to pictures of the city's design icons.  

Italy's Portrait Milano Hotel bedroom  

The background  

The seminary, which had previously been a Napoleonic barracks, served as a hospital during the first and second world wars, was bombed during the second when city manufacturers were attacked and were ultimately turned into offices in the 1980s. It had been boarded up and abandoned for many years when Valeriano Antonioli, the CEO of Lungarno, made the amazing discovery in 2013. However, the seminary community insisted that it would never, ever be turned into a hotel. After five years of talks and a competition, Lungarno was ultimately awarded the contract (perhaps assisted by the Archbishop of Como, who had once expelled the young Antonioli himself from priest school for being unsuited). According to Ferragamo, "They felt that my family could lead the seminary into the future while maintaining the utmost regard for what it had been."  

The three-floor granite structure underwent repairs in 2018 under the supervision of La Sopraintendenza, an Italian historical organization. Renowned architect Michele De Lucchi was responsible for the work. But Covid arrived in March 2020. Ferragamo regretfully recalls, "Just picture taking on this project when our other hotels, which were supposed to be paying the renovations, were closed." The glass panels on the second-floor loggia, approached by a spectacular granite staircase, are the sole clue that nearly 500 years have gone.  

Italian bedroom at Portrait Milano  

A Rooms  

In the 73 rooms and 20 suites on the second and third floors of the Portrait Milan Hotel, which have access to balconies overlooking a square that might be in Indochina, the traveler's golden period of Art Deco meets Portaluppi and Ponti-era Milan in cinematic light. Lifts and changing areas include leather trunk-like studs. The suites are spacious, wood and cardinal red velvet, mid-century residences from Milan. Luxury comes in the details: antler-like leather handles by Florentine craftsmen; a geometric pattern chrome stool that compliments toffee-colored Carrera marble in powder rooms where vanity kits are disguised in suede trunks with brass.  

A questionnaire was used to customize the sleep experience, which includes seven different pillow kinds, including pure bamboo that regulates moisture and temperature. As CEO Antonioli, a self-described "horror of mattress makers," puts it, "getting a good night's sleep is like producing the ideal espresso; you may have the greatest ingredients, equipment, and barista in the world, but you have to account for humidity." The rooms are free of technical annoyances, "so you don't need a degree in engineering to turn on the lights," jokes Bonan. Instead, they are controlled by a brass switchboard by the bed, an iPad in the room, and tea served in hefty silver pots on placemats with embroidered white linen.  

Italy's Library at Portrait in Milan  

The program  

In this instance, Portrait has eschewed the formality appropriate to its premium materials and design, but it might leave the monument seeming unwelcoming. Instead, youthful staff members provide pleasant, brisk, American-style service (Antonioli had a successful hotel career there), making sure that customers are always well-hydrated. While waiting for reservations at Carlo Cracco's namesake restaurant or Alpine wonder Norbert Niederkofler's Horto, the Lifestyle Team secures guides with special access from their laptops while sitting at lobby tables.  

Portrait Milano Italy's Ambiente restaurant  

The meal and beverage  

Ferragamo has placed a wager on young talent to run Portrait's restaurants, echoing Borromeo's expectations of producing future popes in this location. Star-studded chefs were passed up in favor of 32-year-old Alberto Quadro, a graduate of Copenhagen's Geranium and Barcelona's Disfrutar restaurants who was trained by Milanese icon Gualtiero Marchese and Alain Ducasse, one of the world's foremost chefs.  

At 10 11 (at 11 Corso Venezia and 10 Via Sant'Andrea), a breakfast buffet of Franciacorta Prosecco, spremuta, eggs, and freshly-baked Veneziane alla crema muffins is followed by sharing plates for lunch and dinner. Consider traditional Lombardian fare like risaltato of Milanese (saffron) risotto topped with ossobuco (stewed veal shank) on low tables with silver salt shakers that are so hefty they might use as murder weapons in an Agatha Christie book.  

A fine-dining establishment with heart-red velvet banquettes, geometric plasterwork, and Futurist paintings will concentrate on menus for unearthed Lombardian feast-day dishes that swiftly respond to local producers' daily treasures. These establishments will be joined in the piazza by Beefbar, which is making its national debut there. Its Italian founder Riccardo Girardo has returned home after 20 carnivorous global outlets, giving the growing foodie Quadrilatero  

Italian hotel Portrait Milano's bedroom lounge  

The square  

The groundbreaking bio-hacking, anti-aging clinic Longevity Suite, co-founded by cardiologist Dr. Massimo Gualerzi, opens as the Quadrilatero's cult spa in the basement in the spring of 2023. The dimly lighted swimming pool, which is positioned beneath stately columns like a sumptuous Roman bath, is the perfect place to unwind after a day of shopping.  

Low-energy buyers, meanwhile, barely need to get out of bed. A few steps down is the 800 square meters second location of Milanese fashion emporium Antonia's, a temple in an industrial design to established names like Loewe and Jil Sander and up-and-coming designers like Jordanian-Romanian shoemaker Amina Muaddi. With her sculptural organic-shaped jewelry like living metallic nautiluses and Zaha Hadid architecture constructed from leftover leather offcuts, Maria Ferragamo's Sole Studio, the first store of Leonardo's daughter, too completely deserves its place in the plaza.  

To Families  

Eight interconnecting rooms on the North Wing's second floor may accommodate families or parties of up to 21 people.  

Italy's Portrait Milano pool  

Environmental endeavor  

Glass bottles use to distribute water, and 10 11 restaurant employs seasonally available local vegetables while minimizing trash.  

Accessibility for people with disabilities  

Visitors are given the closest rooms and have access to all levels by elevator.  

Address of the hotel: Corso Venezia, 11, 20121 Milan, Italy  

Prices for rooms begin from €935