Milan's grand hotels – six addresses and the stories behind them

From the hotel where Verdi died in 1901 to a fifteenth-century convent and a private garden beside the botanical garden of Brera, Milan's great hotels are part of the city's history. Six addresses, and what makes each of them different.

Milan has never been a city of palace hotels in the Parisian or Roman sense. Its best addresses are quieter: a neo-Gothic house on Via Manzoni that the music world adopted, a convent behind the fashion district, a garden hidden behind Brera. What they share is an address within walking distance of the things that bring people here – La Scala, the Quadrilatero, the Duomo – and a history that is part of the city's own.

These are six of them, from the oldest to the newest. Each suits a different kind of stay, and the neighbourhood matters as much as the room.

Grand Hotel et de Milan, 1863

Designed by Andrea Pizzala and inaugurated in 1863, the hotel on Via Manzoni offered what a grand hotel needed then: post and telegraph services and a hydraulic lift. It was a short carriage ride from La Scala, and from 1872 Giuseppe Verdi made it his Milan home. After the premiere of Falstaff in 1893 crowds greeted him here; in January 1901 he suffered a stroke in his rooms and died on the 27th, aged 87. His suite has been preserved.

Enrico Caruso, Maria Callas, Tamara de Lempicka and Ernest Hemingway all stayed here. The fourth floor was destroyed by bombing in 1943 and the building was restored after the war by Giovanni Muzio; a renovation in the early 1990s uncovered a stretch of third-century defensive wall, now on view in one of the restaurants.

Excelsior Hotel Gallia, 1932

The Gallia family built their hotel beside the new central station, to designs by Giuseppe Laveni and Aldo Avati. It was finished in 1927 but, because the station itself ran late, opened only on 29 February 1932. Qatar Investment Authority bought it in 2006, and a renovation overseen by the studio of Marco Piva, completed in 2015, added a wing of glass and steel to the Belle Époque building. It has 235 rooms and suites, and it is the obvious choice if you arrive and leave by train.

Four Seasons Hotel Milano, 1993

Behind a quiet front on Via Gesù, in the heart of the fashion district, the Four Seasons opened in April 1993 in a restored convent dating from the fifteenth century. It has 118 rooms, 50 of them suites, many around the old cloister. Patricia Urquiola designed the spa, opened in 2012, and reworked the public rooms, the restaurant Zelo and the bar Stilla in 2021; the rooms and suites were renovated in 2025 by Pierre-Yves Rochon.

Bulgari Hotel Milano, 2004

Bulgari's first hotel opened in 2004 at the end of a private street off Via Fratelli Gabba, designed by Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel. Its 61 rooms, 13 of them suites, look onto a private garden of 4,000 square metres that adjoins the botanical garden of Brera, which makes it the greenest address in central Milan. The restaurant is run by the three-star chef Niko Romito, and the spa is known for its pool lined with a gold and emerald mosaic.

Palazzo Parigi Hotel & Grand Spa, 2013

On Corso di Porta Nuova, between Brera and the new towers of Porta Nuova, Palazzo Parigi opened in 2013, designed by its architect-owner Paola Giambelli. Rooms and suites occupy seven of its ten floors, the upper ones with terraces and views to the Duomo, and the Grand Spa covers some 15,000 square feet. Caffè Parigi and a secluded garden make it a place locals use as well as guests.

Mandarin Oriental, Milan, 2015

Opened in the summer of 2015 on Via Andegari, a few steps from La Scala, the Mandarin Oriental joins four eighteenth-century buildings around a courtyard. Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel designed the interiors of its 104 rooms and suites. Seta, its fine-dining restaurant, opened under the chef Antonio Guida, and the Mandarin Bar in the courtyard is one of the city's best-known places for an aperitivo. The spa has an indoor pool.

How to choose

For the opera and the old centre, the Mandarin Oriental and the Grand Hotel et de Milan; for the fashion district on foot, the Four Seasons; for calm and green, the Bulgari; for Brera and Porta Nuova, Palazzo Parigi; for trains and early departures, the Gallia. During the fashion weeks and design week every one of them fills early.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.