Four Seasons Hotel Milan, Milan, Italy
Four Seasons Hotel Milan 5 Stars
"Four Seasons fabulous - the ultimate in understated luxury, with attentive staff, ultra-chic amenities and a great location."
Hotel Overview
Review of Four Seasons Hotel Milan, by The Hotel Inspector
La Calcina is well known as the house in Dorsoduro where Ruskin lived - and hard to resist, both for its historical connection and for its location facing the sunny straits of Venice's Giudecca canal. It is basically a simple pensione, inherited by a go-ahead young couple, but nowadays is better described as a stylish small hotel whose calm, uncluttered rooms provide a welcome antidote to an excess of Venetian rococo.
The rooms
The pretty ground floor reception rooms now including a bar and a cosy, informal bar/restaurant/cafe, La Piscina. Unlike many hotels in the city, there is a marked difference in price between the rooms at the front, with views across the glittering water, and the darkish back rooms, which have no view, but are equally comfortable. Most expensive are the corner rooms, where the sun streams in from two directions. None of the rooms is large, but all compensate with cool cream walls, warm parquet floors, antiques and gleaming bathrooms with heated towel rails. Meals are served in summer on the terrace in front of the hotel, or the lovely, sunny deck that juts out into the canal (or you can book the romantic roof garden for two), and in winter in the marble-floored restaurant/bar with a picture window, so that even if you opt for a bedroom at the back you can still enjoy the vista.
Copyright Charming Small Hotels
Facilities
Awards
'World's Best' Travel + Leisure 08Who stays here?
Elton JohnCome for...
- Fashion week
- Shopping on Via Montenapoleone
- Beautiful original frescoes from its origins as a 15th-century convent
- Family breaks - kids get special menus, toiletries and bathrobes
Not Suitable for...
- Shallow pockets
Children
Baby-sitting is available on request and extra beds can be provided. More importantly children will receive a lovely little package of goodies for their entertainment on arrival.Eating in
Celebrity chef Sergio Mei has created a florid menu of innovative Mediterranean dishes at Veranda and the 68 covers are constantly booked up by the city's beau monde, particularly during fashion week.The Press Say
"A fashionista's favourite, this elegant former convent couldn't be further from its 15th-century monastic roots - or closer to the throbbing heart of Milan's fashion houses." Lonely Planet 08"...the Brioni Suite is truly bespoke with linen courtesy of Bellora, toiletries custom-made by Oikos Fragrances and a giant walnut and oak crossword puzzle." Wallpaper 05
Reviews
Review of Four Seasons, by Jamie Dunford Wood
The Four Seasons Milan regularly wins luxury hotel awards, and you can see why. As an architectural conversion, it is a triumph - a sensitive and clever refashioned15th-century monastery.
The location is surprising - down a quiet side street off the fashionable Monte Napoleone, ideal for fashionistas, many of whom mill about the low lobby clutching Prada bags. The tone, in typical Four Seasons style, is beige and marble, with the usual extravagant flower arrangements. The architect has retained the cloisters, but glassed them in, with a/c units disguised in wall mounted walnut veneered consoles.
The facilities
In the centre of the luxury hotel is a lovely, small, sunken garden area, around which are arranged a number of underground restaurants, cleverly lit with natural light from a central light well.There is no pool at the luxury hotel, but a gym and fitness centre, as well as extensive business and meeting facilities. The overall tone of Four Seasons Milan is discreet - not as heavenly perhaps, despite the cloisters, as the George V in Paris, with none of the same excitement, but cool, restrained and sophisticated.
The rooms
Upstairs, via a mosaic-floored elevator, most of the 118 rooms are large and very light, most with two windows, and the deluxes face the central garden. Hallways at the luxury hotel are cream and pale yellow, with pale wood and Fortuny fabrics, and darker 'pear and sycamore' headboards and furniture. The standard shape is long and rectangular, sofas at one end, the bed at the other, a desk in the middle between the two windows. Superiors are as large, though not always quite as light.