Casa Cipriani Milano – a 1910 palazzo turned private club

On the corner of Via Palestro and Corso Venezia, facing Milan's oldest public garden, a stone palazzo built in 1910 for the Bernasconi family now carries a new name. Casa Cipriani Milano occupies Palazzo Bernasconi, a building that later served as the atelier of the tailor Gianni Campagna and was sold after his death in 2017, before the Cipriani family — the dynasty behind Harry's Bar in Venice — reopened it in 2022 as the second address of its Casa concept, following the 2021 debut in Manhattan's Battery Maritime Building. Behind its doors are just fifteen rooms and suites run as a private members' club, with hotel guests admitted as temporary members, a restaurant serving the Carpaccio and Bellini invented by founder Giuseppe Cipriani, and interiors by the Florentine architect Michele Bönan. The MICHELIN Guide gives it One Key.

01The house

Palazzo Bernasconi is one of Porta Venezia's quietly grand addresses, built in 1910 and renovated into Casa Cipriani in 2022. For decades it housed tailoring workshops — first Domenico Caraceni, then Gianni Campagna — and it was sold after Campagna's death in 2017 before entering the portfolio that would eventually bring in Cipriani.

The restoration of the protected building fell to the Milanese studio BMS Progetti, working to a brief that kept the palazzo's Liberty-era bones — high ceilings, stone façades, wrought ironwork — while threading in the nautical, old-world-club language the Cipriani family had already set out a year earlier at Casa Cipriani New York, inside the Battery Maritime Building on Manhattan's waterfront.

02Rooms and suites

There are fifteen keys in total: twelve rooms and three suites, each individually decorated by Michele Bönan, the Florentine architect known for treating interiors with the precision of tailoring. Walnut boiserie and oak floors run through every category, lit by Venetian Venini chandeliers, with Cipollino marble bathrooms and linen from Rivolta Carmignani.

Insider tip

Walk north to the Quadrilatero della Moda or across the street into the Giardini Indro Montanelli.

Sizes climb from the 28-square-metre Classic Room through the Superior Room (32–33 sqm, facing Corso Venezia or the gardens) and the Deluxe Room (34–42 sqm) to the 41-square-metre Premier Corner Room with its double outlook. At the top sit the open-plan, 54-square-metre Signature Suite and the Executive Suites, the larger of which spans 96 square metres over two bedrooms — all of them looking down into the Giardini Indro Montanelli or across the rooftops of Porta Venezia.

03Where to eat

Casa Cipriani Milano keeps two dining rooms rather than one. The Pickering Room, open daily from seven in the morning to midnight, carries breakfast through to dinner in a setting built around a glazed winter garden, with Venetian sandwiches, pizzas and Italian classics on the menu.

The Restaurant, open daily from midday to half past eleven at night, is the grander of the two: wood and marble opening onto a terrace that looks over the gardens, and a menu built on Harry's Bar staples — baked tagliolini with ham, calf's liver alla Veneziana, baby artichokes from the island of Torcello and the vanilla meringue cake. The carpaccio and the Bellini on the list are both credited to founder Giuseppe Cipriani, who is said to have served the Bellini for the first time in Milan at this address.

04The bar

The Living Room occupies the top floor, a private, intimate setting by day that turns into the house's evening stage. It runs Sunday to Tuesday from eleven in the morning to midnight, and Wednesday to Saturday until two, with DJ sets taking over from Wednesday night, turning the top-floor club room into Porta Venezia's late-night meeting point for members and their guests.

05Spa and wellbeing

Below the public rooms, Casa Cipriani Spa spreads across more than 1,000 square metres on two levels — the first Cipriani spa anywhere — designed by Studio Apostoli. The women's wing uses stone mosaics graded from ivory to pink, a cedar-wood Finnish sauna, an ice fountain and a hammam under a vaulted ceiling clad entirely in French red marble.

The men's side takes its cue from the Japanese onsen, pairing wood and stone through a double-level sauna, a Turkish bath, sensory showers and its own ice fountain. Treatments run across six cabins, with reflexology and stress-recovery rituals from a team of hand-picked therapists, a flotation pool, and a private gym with Technogym equipment for members and hotel guests.

06The neighbourhood

The hotel stands on the corner of Via Palestro and Corso Venezia, just north of the Quadrilatero della Moda, Milan's fashion district. Directly opposite is the Giardini Indro Montanelli, the city's oldest public park, which encloses the Baroque Palazzo Dugnani, home to Milan's Natural History Museum and a planetarium.

From here it is an easy walk into the shopping streets of Corso Venezia and on to the Duomo and Teatro alla Scala, making Porta Venezia one of the few central Milanese addresses that trades traffic for tree cover.

07Making the most of a stay

Since 2024, Casa Cipriani has turned its lounge into a gallery for Arte a Casa, an initiative pairing the Cipriani family's own photographic archive with work by contemporary Milanese artists, a nod to the artistic company Harry's Bar kept in Venice, where regulars once included Eugenio Montale, Ernest Hemingway and Andy Warhol.

For getting about, the house car is a Mercedes-Benz S-Class supplied through partner Sixt: guests can request a complimentary one-way ride within a five-kilometre radius, available daily from eleven in the morning to seven in the evening on a first-come basis through the concierge — read on the hotel's own site in October 2026.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.