Casa Cipriani Milano

The Giardini Indro Montanelli – Milan’s oldest park – surrounds the city’s natural history museum, which is housed in the Baroque-style Palazzo Dugnani. It’s a photogenic slice of cosmopolitan calm, and overlooking this is Casa Cipriani Milano, a hotel set in a palazzo whose entrance is flanked by liveried doormen welcoming guests with understated bows. This luxurious hideaway comes from the heritage hospitality company made famous by Venice’s Hotel Cipriani, then New York members’ club Casa Cipriani, and, of course, for inventing the Bellini, too, which surely must be worthy of a Nobel Prize. Once inside, we’re greeted in the lobby and taken to a wood-panelled annexe for a hush-hush check-in. 

But, I digress…before we laid eyes on the Casa, an email had arrived to confirm our booking, instructing guests: ‘Our landmark building evokes the refined elegance of the art nouveau period, so we kindly ask that all members and guests respect the tradition of that era through appropriate attire.’ Accompanying this was a comprehensive list of what the dress code permits, including ‘jeans in a solid colour with no rips’, ‘plain polo shirts until 6pm’ and ‘elegant hats’ – although these must be removed in dining rooms. Not permitted are: ‘hooded sweatshirts, athletic wear of any kind, including running shoes’; ‘men’s t-shirts unless worn under a suit jacket’ or ‘overly revealing’ clothes. We’re not the first new arrivals to ask, in hushed voices, if our just-off-the-plane outfits are acceptable – the smiling staff look us up and down, and deem them fitting. But, the next morning, over breakfast, I watch them discreetly approach a hungover guest in flip-flops and t-shirt and ask him to change. 

With this sartorial approval, we’re free to get acquainted with the place. On the ground floor there’s the Pickering Room, a narrow restaurant with a lacquered wooden bar, geometric marble-tiled flooring, and green-velvet and leather banquettes. On either side there are lifts up to the hotel’s 15 rooms; within, low velvet sofas have helpfully been installed for the ride up. Suites are as impeccably tailored as a Milanese suit, with dark glossy wood and striped wallpaper, retro black-and-white photographs of Italian starlets on the walls and the kinds of mirrors that make everyone look good. Sofas are navy velvet, beds are – of course – sumptuous, in white linen with curtains that close silently at the touch of a button, all softly lit. In the chrome and marble bathroom, I saw perhaps the most glamorous thing I’ve ever seen: a small silver cupboard hidden in the wall for the toilet paper, which I assume doesn’t meet the dress code.

A few floors below, in the basement, is a wellness centre with a cedarwood sauna, saltwater flotation pool, a steam bath clad in green onyx and a hammam in red marble. The design was inspired by a Venetian lagoon, and while in this subterranean spa guests feel as though they are – pleasantly – underwater, trailing through dreamlike corridors with walls that appear to glow. Above us, on the top two floors, are the Living Room bar and handsome Club Restaurant, with its walnut-wood panelling and a wide terrace that looks out over the Porta Venezia district’s rooftops. We visited just before Milan Design Week, and as the night approached, the restaurant filled up quickly with men in very white shirts and women with long, expensive-looking hair. The Milanese menu is decadent and classic - the carpaccio and cocktails are a source of pride for the group, there’s copious amounts of pasta, transportive tomato salads and a memorable tiramisu. Breakfast in the Pickering Room, with its ‘winter garden’ and faux-ivy feels as though we’re eating in a grand courtyard – the tables are dainty and low, the eggs and coffee delicious. 

This is a hotel that leans hard into its exclusive credentials – the dress code and privacy-protecting vigilance (no photographs are permitted, for instance, despite teasing us with the insanely Instagrammable lift) mean that you’re never entirely relaxed. But this isn’t unpleasant – you sit straight here, you remain clean, keep respectful – the inherent glamour gently forces elegance upon guests. We eat breakfast surrounded by low-talking business meetings (like its New York sister, this is a private members’ club as well as a hotel) and the flip-flopped guest, who’d been sent upstairs to change. On his return, he accepted the loan of a blazer, and ordered fruit salad in his trainers, defiant.