Milan, Italy

Vico Milano

Price per night from$344.23

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR318.18), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Cool, calm and curated

Setting

Storied centro storico

From da Vinci’s Last Supper to Armani’s first boutique, Milan specialises in inspiring creative masterstrokes; we might just be tempted to add Vico Milano to the list. Tucked between the centro storico and the hip Navigli district, this seven-suite guesthouse has been painstakingly conceived by design-hooked hotelier Neri Baccheschi Berti. Each room is a design geek’s grotto: Moroccan tiles in boiled-sweet hues here, a mirrored wall there, and a minimalist mezzanine floor featuring a bespoke four-poster bed. In the lobby, mid-century armchairs, hard-won at a Milanese auction, lure guests down for Negroni-fuelled evenings at the bar. Throw in impeccable service and lashings of the Baccheschi Berti family’s award-winning wine, and you’ve got a date with a pied-à-terre worth dressing up for.

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A welcome drink and snacks

Facilities

Photos Vico Milano facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Seven.

Check–Out

Between 8am and noon. Check-in, from 3pm to 7pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £299.91 (€350), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €4.50 per person per night on check-out.

More details

Rates don’t include breakfast, but a spread of pastries, cold cuts, fresh-pressed juices and more is available for €20 a person.

Also

Watch this wall space: with exclusive exhibitions with local galleries in the works, the hotel’s hefty art collection is set to get even more impressive.

At the hotel

Gym, library, living area, free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV, Nespresso coffee machine, tea and coffee selection, minibar, Aesop bath products.

Our favourite rooms

From teak floors from Myanmar to jewel-toned tiles from Fez, each of the seven rooms features a mini museum’s worth of globe-trotting treasures. If you’re planning a Pretty Woman-style outfit-changing montage with the bounty from your boutique-shopping spree, go for the Deluxe Suite – it has a separate living room and dressing area.

Spa

There’s no spa, but the gym room is decked out with the full gamut of Technogym equipment.

Packing tips

Leave suitcase space for a bottle (or five) of the Baccheschi Berti family’s award-winning organic wine.

Also

The split-level rooms mean this stay isn’t suitable for wheelchair users.

Children

There’s not much for little Smiths at this grown-up guesthouse, but children of all ages are welcome. A baby cot can be added to rooms on request.

Sustainability efforts

The hotel uses solar panels to reduce non-renewable energy usage. It’s also a plastic bottle-free zone, and fresh produce is sourced straight from suppliers to cut out as much plastic waste as possible.

Food and Drink

Photos Vico Milano food and drink

Top Table

If you’re not propped up, aperitivo in hand, at the bar, there’s a bespoke wingback armchair with your name on it.

Dress Code

Slip on some artfully avant-garde vintage threads and you’ll be practically part of the furniture.

Hotel restaurant

The hotel doesn’t have a restaurant, but a breakfast of fresh pastries, Italian cold cuts and more is served in the lobby. There’s also a selection of locally sourced light bites available at the bar, so you won’t be left high and dry if hunger strikes.

Hotel bar

Set against a sultry marble backdrop, the hotel’s sleek bar adds a dash of art-deco allure to the hotel’s lobby and living area. Here, the organic wines from the Castello di Vicarello estate are the main event. Once you’ve sampled them all, there’s a long list of vintages from Veneto, Lombardy and Trentino to try. The bar also serves up a range of classic cocktails and champagne, along with plates of Tuscan salumi and cheeses to stave off the late-night nibbles. Tipple procured, sink into a plush velvet sofa, take your pick of imposing armchairs or kick back in the curated library – at a table designed by Neri himself.

Last orders

Breakfast is served from 7.30am to 10am, and the bar serves drinks and dainty plates from 3pm to 8pm.

Location

Photos Vico Milano location
Address
Vico Milano
Corso Genova 11
Milan
80142
Italy

The hotel is on the south-west edge of Milan’s centro storico, right by Basilicas Park and walking distance from the Duomo.

Planes

Milan Malpensa Airport is under an hour’s drive away. The hotel can arrange taxi or limousine transfers.

Trains

The Malpensa express train, which connects the airport with the city centre, stops at Milano Cadorna railway station, a short drive from the hotel. The service also stops at Milano Centrale station, as do high speed services from Italian cities including Rome and Venice, plus cross-border trains from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The hotel can arrange transfers from either station for around €15 each way. Once you’re there, Milan’s zippy metro makes getting around a breeze. Sant’Agostino is the hotel’s nearest stop – it’s on the M2 line, which runs straight to Cadorna and Milano Centrale stations.

Automobiles

The centro storico is eminently strollable and the metro makes light work of longer journeys. If you can, go sans car and save yourself the bother of congestion zones and scarce parking spots.

Other

Milan’s famous yellow trams make a nifty way to nip around the city. There’s a stop on the same road as the hotel; pick up line two there to head straight into the city centre, stopping right outside the Duomo.

Worth getting out of bed for

Who could fail to be lured from their bed by the scent of espresso and fresh-baked pastries? Follow your nose to the lobby and a lazy morning of itinerary-plotting awaits, fuelled by a full Continental spread.

That said, you’ll want to set off sharpish if you’re destined for the Duomo – queues to see inside the Gothic masterpiece grow by the hour. Mingle with the Old Masters at Castello Sforzesco, a sprawling Renaissance citadel now home to an art museum with an allstar collection: Michelangelo, da Vinci, Titian and Tintoretto are just a handful of the headline acts. Parco Sempione, with its collection of sculptures by Arman, Francesco Barzaghi and more, is right next door.

Shopping in Milan needs little introduction. Designer flagships dominate under the glass dome of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and the chic neoclassical shopfronts of the Quadrilatero della Moda make up one of the world’s foremost shopping districts. If your style skews a little more off-beat, though, Via Giangiacomo Mora may be more your thing. Tucked between two basilicas, the street is home to a bevy of vintage boutiques brimming with high-end finds and curated retro collections.

With the Navigli district in strolling distance from the hotel, after-dark FOMO is a thing of the past. By day, you can cruise the last surviving canals in a city that once had waterways to rival Venice. Come evening, this is where the Milanese cool crowd congregate; if you feel like joining them, wander down and watch the waterfront world  from your pick of stylish aperitivo spots.

Local restaurants

Panino Giusto has been making deep-filled sandwiches an artform since 1979. There’s an impressive menu of combinations, including two masterminded by a Michelin-starred chef, but it’s hard to beat the classic: crusty ciabatta, house-aged parma ham and a generous helping of gooey mozzarella. There are outposts scattered across the city, so you’ll never be far from a reliable lunch.

Spilling out into the Baroque courtyard of Palazzo Recalcati, Dal Bolognese serves up a hearty menu of well-rehearsed Emilian classics. The chefs keep tables stacked with steaming plates of tagliatelle and towering lasagne slices, but the showstopper here is the signature boiled beef drizzled with garlic-laced green sauce.

And no tour of Milan’s haute-cuisine scene is complete without an evening at IYO, Italy’s first Japanese restaurant to score a Michelin star. Between walls of exposed brick and slate-swirled marble, head chef ​​Giampiero Brotzu’s team whip up fine-dining feasts of delicate sashimi stacks, citrusy seafood tempura and the best sushi in the city. There’s plenty to keep carnivores content, too – the wagyu gyoza are something of a speciality. Dinnertime ditherers, let the nine-course seasonal tasting menu make the decisions for you.

Local cafés

Whether you’re in need of a breakfast sugar boost or afternoon espresso and cake, make Pavé your go-to patisserie pitstop. Pull up a vintage chair and pick from a counter full of tarts and pastries so picturesque you’ll almost feel bad for eating them. Almost.

Local bars

Milan has long been a bastion of the avant-garde, and no bar embraces that legacy with more gusto than Nottingham Forest. The interiors might resemble the treasure-lined cabin of a pirate king, but it’s a team of mad-scientist mixologists who rule here. The menu features its fair share of gimmicks – a Negroni with the vodka presented in a test tube, a foaming tipple served in a bathtub, complete with citrus-scented rubber duck – but beneath that, these guys are serious about their science. Pink gin is carefully carbonated in-house, and there’s a martini infused with pine by a laser-wielding bartender. Don’t be deterred, traditionalists – you’ll find the full sweep of classic cocktails too, and without a test tube in sight.

Reviews

Photos Vico Milano reviews
Scarlett Conlon

Anonymous review

By Scarlett Conlon, Style scribe

It takes a special kind of place to make you forget the disastrous previous 24 hours the minute you walk through the door. Even more special, one that greets you with an umbrella amidst a biblical Milanese downpour, whisks your sodden bags away, promptly serves a welcome aperitivo and very generously compliments you on your patchy Italian. Needless to say, Vico Milano had us at ‘hello’. 
 
A little background is, of course, needed. Having booked our dreamy Milan stay some months in advance, I took us on an impromptu detour across the French-Italian border the night before when I discovered that our beloved Keziah Jones was playing an intimate gig in the small village of Tende (worth noting here I have been trying to surprise Mr Smith with tickets to see him for the best part of 18 years and this was the weekend of our 18th anniversary).
 
On arrival, my romantic spontaneity soon resulted in conditions that would test the best of long-term relationships and resulted in us abandoning a pre-booked hotel that turned out to be a damp hostel, waiting in the pouring rain for an hour and a half at an invisible bus stop for a bus that never showed up, mourning ruined suede shoes, and nursing two pretty foul moods. Up with the larks the following morning to hotfoot it to Milan resulted in more rain, more unreliable transport, frustratingly crap coffee, and an iPhone which met its maker in a puddle.
 
To footnote this delightfully dismal adventure, my vision of swooshing into the Vico Milano reception like a glamourous Milano sciura was thwarted, thanks to the rainwater that had seeped into my bag providing all my pressed white cotton Isabel Marant dresses with creepy brown water lines (IYKYK) and Mr Smith’s iPad flicking on… but mostly off.
 
But – and you can tell where I’m going with this – all that was soon at the back of our minds. You don’t need a prelude as chaotic as ours to appreciate the immediate tranquillity of Vico Milano, but it serves nicely for the purposes of me pressing home the point. 

In a city that is brilliantly more reverb than relaxing and one that comes with an energy that is deftly defiant of the Italian notion of piano piano, this little oasis is something hard won; it is seductively serene.
 
Not a sound could be heard from the bustling Corso Genova stretch as the wonderful resident manager, Luciano, settled us into our deluxe suite. A duplex split over two levels, every inch was considered so cleverly: the open-plan stairs against a floor-to-ceiling mirror doubled the space which included a multo-chic dressing area, a proper-sized fridge (always love this) concealed under the steps, and a bathroom lined in Aesop products with lighting so flattering you almost couldn’t see the mascara gloop under my eyes. Ascending the stairs to the king-size wooden four-poster bed (a commission by specialist artisans in Tuscany), we felt immediately at home.
 
Lovely Luciano told us later that it was always the intention of owner Neri Baccheschi-Berti when imagining the seven-room hotel. The site, previously used to make Legnano racing bikes, was the Berti family’s fashion business HQ for years before they commenced its conversion in 2019 and an intimacy is retained all over the place. In our room were pieces of vintage Chinese furniture the family has picked up on its travels over the years, the carpet (which felt like clouds underfoot) was commissioned by Berti in Morocco, and the tapestry adorning the wall had been sourced from Sumatra by his mother in the 1970s.
 
Such is its ingenuity of design, it’s the kind of space that convinces you that all you really need is 26 square-metres to live in full time; the kind that makes you take pictures of the taps and tiles so that you can dream of one day replicating it all at home (the tiles, by the way, are Zelig and handmade in custom colours and took three full weeks to fit).
 
Dried off and dressed in clothes that didn’t need a dry clean, we decided to head out for a spritz. On the cobble-hopping rain-dash to get to the front door, we had clocked the legendary Pasticceria Cucchi a two-minute walk away on the corner of Via Edmondo de Amicis and so headed there to hit reset on our weekend. One turned into two, which turned into three (a reminder: suede shoes, iPhone, Isabel Marant) by which point the Milan sky was a dark shade of mushroom soup and we were reliably informed that another deluge was on the way.
 
So reader, we did what any self-respecting weekend-trippers staying in a beautiful hotel does; we got a takeout Margherita pizza and retreated to our little hideaway at Vico Milano where we indulged in its very comprehensive honesty bar, before indulging a little more in our equally comprehensive mini bar. 

Stretching out under the most sumptuous cotton sheets, on the most comfortable bed, watching Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love on the huge projector on the wall opposite as thunder stormed around us, it was a perfect turn of events. Basic? Hell, yes. But bliss, nonetheless.
 
The good vibes continued the following morning as we made our way downstairs towards our breakfast table, admiring the snazzy gym room along the way (I’m more pancakes than Peletons in the mornings). A continental breakfast of cured meats and cheeses sourced from the family’s Castello di Vicarello estate in Tuscany were served with organic yoghurts and fruits and a pretty perfect cappuccino and we were set up for the day.
 
Gratefully, the storm had passed and so armed with Luciano’s helpful directions and suggestions we headed out. The hotel is about a seven-minute walk to the Porto Genova Metro station, which takes you up to the cultural epicentre of Brera and connects you to anywhere else you want to go (the trams are a great shout too, but I have tried and failed on too many occasions to recommend a route with any conviction). 

But we decided to stay local. Just around the corner is the Navigli district, which has all the mid-century furniture shops, restaurants, record stores and bars to keep you entertained and well-watered on a Saturday afternoon in central Milan. I’m a big believer in getting to know one area really well rather than seeing a little bit of everything in one trip – plus it gives you a good reason to come back.
 
That evening, we ticked a few wish-list locations off our list: the Grand Hotel Osteria for dinner – a 10-minute taxi ride down the canal from the hotel and all traditional osteria fare with Wes Anderson vibes – and a night at the legendary Bar Basso polishing off its signature negroni sbagliato before happily strolling back to our home from home.
 
Reluctantly tearing ourselves from bed the following morning, we demolished another legendary breakfast and checked out, gratefully leaving our bags behind so we could spend the rest of our day on the big Navigli market that happens on the last Sunday of every month. If you’re in the market for both contemporary and vintage Italian art, fashion and furniture, book a room at Vico Milano as you’ll be in for a treat.
 
Eager to bring something home (namely some handmade tiles, a nice rug or a tapestry), but with hand luggage only, we were delighted to pick up vintage linen curtains (me), a Louis Poulsen lamp (Mr Smith), and a number quirky 1980s enamelled water glasses which we both clocked to bring home with us.
 
On route to the airport, we went via the hotel to pack our treasures into our bags. The sense of excitement and rejuvenation we felt compared to the mood we arrived with was not lost on us. Some places just have the energy it takes to transport you somewhere special - and Vico Milano is one of them. Come rain or shine. 

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Price per night from $344.23