Built inside the former Archbishop’s Seminary in Corso Venezia, the hotel took about 10 years in the making before it opened in December last year. It has been a fascinating journey of chance encounters, unexpected hurdles and serendipity, for Valeriano Antonioli, Chief Executive Officer of Lungarno Collection.
The historic building has donned several avatars since 1565: apart from being one of the earliest seminaries in the world, it has been a library, a printing shop and a school. For the last 50 years or so, the property has been inaccessible to the public. After extensive renovations, the address is now home to the luxury Portrait Milano – an honour bestowed by the Catholic Church upon the descendants of Italian fashion genius Salvatore Ferragamo, who own the Lungarno Collection.
Portrait Milano offers a luxurious base for exploring the city’s high-end fashion scene, cultural landmarks and exquisite dining options.
“We have almost 1,000 square metres of artfully designed boutiques as part of our property, designed like a Soviet era bus station, with different collections of fashion and jewellery on separate stops. Of course, we are surrounded by 480 or so boutiques together known as Milan’s Fashion District. We can arrange private tours and even exclusive shopping experiences by appointment for our guests,” Antonioli tells us.
The property has 73 rooms, with the smaller ones being about 40 sqm, with more than 20 suites taking up 80 sqm to 125 sqm. “All guest rooms have been designed for sheer comfort and are very family orientated with spacious guestrooms, dedicated family amenities, family studios and suites. We have 44 interconnected rooms, for instance, and specially for our discerning guests – the Arab market – we can privatise the entire second floor if desired. Combine this, with a VIP private elevator that connects straight from our huge underground parking lot, and we are already seeing Arab guests arriving in style in one of the Italian supercars.”
Portrait Milano is quite the gastronomic experience as well and the local Milanese have already noticed, Antonioli tells us. Beefbar, a restaurant with an Italian DNA and a strong cosmopolitan essence, has taken Milan by storm for the unique cuisine it offers. The casual dining, in-house-managed, 10_11 (Ten Eleven) offers a bar, a restaurant, a splendid garden, and an evocative terrace, with cuisine inspired by the tradition from Northern Italy.
“By the end of the year, we will have opened new outlets to a total of four bars and restaurants.”
The end of the year will also see the opening of The Longevity Suite, an enlightened brand whose founders include Luigi Caterino. It promotes integrated, high-performance, high-tech protocols to guide people toward personal wellbeing through a perfect balance between health, conscious beauty, and mental energy. The Longevity Suite will manage Portrait Milano’s wellness centre.
Design wise, Portrait Milano offers splendid Baroque archway in the majestic Piazza del Quadrilatero with 2,800 sqm to freely move around and enjoy an exclusive shopping and true haute couture experience. First built some 1,000 years ago, it was a perfect square in the very centre of Milano. “We have 76 columns, which we had to carefully restore because they went on to become emblematic of the region’s design when they were first built. The façade, of course, is protected, we could also only do restoration on the outside but there was extensive damage to some of the buildings during the Second World War, and that required more extensive work,” Valeriano tells us.
The careful renovation project promoted by the Ferragamo Group, and signed by Michele de Lucchi and Michele Bönan for the interior design, ended up in a space that is perfect for high-end fashion, art and luxury events, not just hotel stays.
There already have been a few installations at Portrait Milano, as can be expected, with its central Milanese location, pleasing aesthetics and luxury outlook.