Portrait Milano

For more than four centuries the Seminario Arcivescovile of Milan stood behind a gate on Corso Venezia, closed to the city. Carlo Borromeo founded it in 1564, in the years after the Council of Trent, to train the priests of the diocese, and the seminary stayed there until it moved out to Venegono in the twentieth century. In December 2022 the complex reopened as Portrait Milano, and the great courtyard at its centre, renamed Piazza del Quadrilatero, became a public passage between Corso Venezia and Via Sant'Andrea, the first new square the city centre had gained in a long time.

History

Borromeo's seminary was among the first founded under the reforms of Trent, and its buildings grew over the following century into a quadrangle of two-storey arcades around a courtyard. The monumental gateway on Corso Venezia, with its caryatids, dates from 1652 and is attributed to Francesco Maria Richini, the architect of much of baroque Milan. When the diocese moved its seminary to the countryside the buildings went through long years of partial use. The Ferragamo family's Lungarno Collection, which runs the Portrait hotels in Florence and Rome, took the complex on a long lease and spent several years on the conversion, with the Archdiocese keeping ownership.

Architecture and design

The cloister is the plan: two floors of arcades around a courtyard of 2,800 square metres. The restoration kept the arcades, the stone and the proportions, and the hotel's rooms line the upper floors behind them. Michele Bönan, the Florentine designer who has done every Lungarno Collection property, drew the interiors in the house style: lacquered wood, brass, marble, deep colours and a great deal of Italian fabric, with photographs and objects from the Ferragamo archive. On the ground floor the arcades hold shops, the hotel's bar and restaurant, and the entrances to the square, which stays open to the public during the day.

Rooms and suites

Portrait Milano has 73 rooms and suites, most of them suites by the hotel's definition, since the brand builds around apartment-style rooms with a sitting area and a pantry. Ceilings are high, windows tall; the rooms on the courtyard side look down into the square, those on the outer side onto Corso Venezia or Via Sant'Andrea. The largest suites occupy the corners of the quadrangle.

Dining

10_11, written as the numbers, is the bar and restaurant under the arcades, with tables out in the square in good weather and a name taken from the street numbers of the two entrances. The menu is Italian with a grill, run with the Beefbar group. Breakfast is served in the restaurant and in the courtyard.

Wellness

The Longevity Suite operates the spa, with a programme of treatments built around cold therapy, oxygen and light, alongside a gym.

Weddings and events

The square itself is the hotel's largest venue and has been used for fashion shows, dinners and receptions during Milan's design and fashion weeks. Indoors, the hotel has function rooms on the ground floor for meetings and private dinners. Weddings are hosted, with the courtyard and the arcades as the setting.

Location

Corso Venezia runs from Piazza San Babila to the Giardini Pubblici, and the hotel sits on its first block, with the other entrance on Via Sant'Andrea in the Quadrilatero della Moda, the fashion district of Via Montenapoleone and Via della Spiga. The Duomo is ten minutes on foot, La Scala about the same. San Babila metro station is at the corner. Milan Linate airport is about 20 minutes by car, Malpensa about 50; Milano Centrale station is ten minutes by taxi. A luxury hotel in Milan has rarely had this much open space around it.