Hotel Principe di Savoia

Piazza della Repubblica is a broad, trafficked square between Milan's central station and the centre, and its one monumental building is a hotel. Hotel Principe di Savoia opened there in 1927 as the Principe e Savoia, a house for the industrialists and the opera crowd of a city that was becoming Italy's business capital. The square has changed around it; the skyscrapers of Porta Nuova now rise behind it, and the hotel has outlasted everything else on the piazza.

History

The hotel was built for the Compagnia Italiana dei Grandi Alberghi, the company that ran Italy's leading hotels of the period, and opened in 1927 as the Principe e Savoia. In the 1930s it took its present name. Through the post-war decades it became the hotel of Milan's fashion industry and of visiting heads of state; Maria Callas stayed during her Scala years, and the guest book since then includes Madonna, George Clooney and most of the designers who show at Milan Fashion Week. The Brunei Investment Agency bought the hotel in the 1980s, and in 2006 it became part of Dorchester Collection, the group that also owns The Dorchester in London and the Plaza Athénée in Paris.

Architecture and design

The building is neoclassical in the Lombard manner of the 1920s, a tall symmetrical block with a rusticated base, tall windows and a cornice that takes the evening light. The interiors are the point: the lobby and the ground-floor salons have marble floors, Murano glass chandeliers, painted ceilings and heavy damask, and the hotel has leaned into the decoration with each renovation rather than stripping it back. The effect is Milan as it imagines itself, rich and formal, and it is one of the few hotels in the city that never tried to be modern.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has around 300 rooms and suites over ten floors. Rooms are decorated in the same classical style, with inlaid furniture, silk wall coverings and marble bathrooms. The suites rise through several categories to the Presidential Suite on the tenth floor, three bedrooms with a private spa and a swimming pool lined in mosaic in the Pompeian style, with a terrace over the city. It is among the largest hotel suites in Italy and the one the hotel is photographed for. The Imperial Suite, also on the upper floors, has a private terrace and its own hammam.

Dining

Acanto is the restaurant, with a garden terrace and an Italian menu, and it serves the hotel's breakfast. Il Salotto is the lobby lounge, used for tea in the afternoon and aperitivo in the evening, and the Principe Bar is the hotel's cocktail bar, with a pianist and a reputation that reaches beyond the hotel. During fashion week the lobby and the bar become the industry's living room.

Wellness

Club 10 Fitness and Beauty Centre occupies the top floor, with a swimming pool under a glass roof, a gym, a sauna, a steam room and treatment rooms; the view across the roofs towards the Porta Nuova towers is part of the treatment. The pool is open to hotel guests and members.

Weddings and events

The ground floor has a suite of connecting salons with painted ceilings and chandeliers, used for gala dinners, fashion presentations and weddings; the largest can seat several hundred for a banquet. The hotel holds weddings in these rooms and on the Acanto terrace in summer, and its meeting floor takes conferences and board meetings. As a luxury hotel in Milan it has hosted the dinners of the fashion and furniture fairs for decades, and the salons are booked far ahead for those weeks.

Location

Piazza della Repubblica 17 is on the northern edge of the historic centre. Repubblica station on Metro line 3 is two minutes away, Milano Centrale is a ten-minute walk north, and Porta Nuova, with its towers and the Bosco Verticale, is a short walk east. The Quadrilatero della Moda and La Scala are about 15 minutes on foot or five by taxi. Linate airport is about 8 km, Malpensa about 50 km via the Malpensa Express train from Centrale.