From the renovation of the former Archbishop’s Seminary on Corso Venezia comes the new Milanese destination of hospitality and dining, shopping and wellness, entertainment and culture.
As of December 2022, after more than two decades, one of the most fascinating and secret places in the Quadrilateral will open again to the Milanese and visitors to the city: Portrait Milano.
Thanks to a careful conservative renovation project promoted by Lungarno Collection and entrusted to Architect Michele De Lucchi and his studio AMDL CIRCLE, the former Archiepiscopal Seminary at Corso Venezia 11 in fact becomes Portrait Milano, a new destination that combines the tailor-made hospitality of the Portrait brand with gourmand experiences, shopping, and wellness.
Portrait Milano – Experience Milan
Past the splendid baroque portal by Francesco Maria Richini, the majestic Quadrilateral Square of over 2800 square meters opens up into a new promenade that connects Corso Venezia with Via Sant’Andrea – offering access to the elegant seventeenth-century colonnade and an area of restaurants, bars, boutiques and wellness proposals.
“My family and I are honored to have had the opportunity to add a new chapter to the long history of this extraordinary place. After its many lives, today the former Archbishop’s Seminary is being reopened to Milan, to the Milanese and so many lovers of the city who will finally be able to admire it in all of its architectural beauty, as well as live the experiences it will be able to offer,” says Leonardo Ferragamo, President of Lungarno Collection.
“Our Portraits were born with a strong desire to enhance the quality, history, and values of the places in which they reside. In Milan this will also be possible thanks to the collaboration of partners chosen and strongly desired by us who share values and visions with us and who we are sure will bring great quality and excellence to this project,” he continues
A Place for Living the City
Among the selected brands present in the project is Beefbar, a restaurant with deeply Italian DNA and a distinctly cosmopolitan spirit. The team of founder Riccardo Giraudi is entrusted with the restaurant and bar on the eastern side of the square.
Antonia, a landmark fashion sign in Milan and around the world, finds a new 750-square-meter space under the square’s colonnade, adding to the historic Brera storefronts.
SO-LE STUDIO, the first flagship of the project born from the creativity of Maria Sole Ferragamo, brings back to light the beauty of abandoned materials, in a circular process of creativity and design, transforming them into striking jewels.
SO-LE STUDIO, the first flagship of the project born from the creativity of Maria Sole Ferragamo, brings back to light the beauty of abandoned materials, in a circular process of creativity and design, transforming them into striking jewels.
Portrait hospitality directly manages the spaces dedicated to bars and restaurants on the north side. The casual dining restaurant 10_11 (“Ten Eleven”) in its eclectic settings (bar, restaurant, garden and porch) offers cuisine inspired by Lombardy and beyond, with traditional, authentic and alluring flavors that evoke memories, and a mixology that makes the evolution of the Italian and Milanese ritual of the aperitivo, its main focus.
The gourmet restaurant will open in February 2023. The young and talented chef Alberto Quadrio will have the task of captaining these realities as Executive Chef and designing the menus of the two restaurants. Born in 1990, Piedmontese by origin but who has become a citizen of the world through the many experiences he has lived alongside the biggest names in the culinary academy, he is faithful to the value of sharing that he learned from his family and that he will also interpret at Portrait Milano.
The project’s common denominator is the Quadrilateral Square, which all partners overlook and which aspires to be experienced as an opportunity for many. It is a stage that bears no one’s signature, simply a name – Portrait Milano – that inevitably binds it to the city and all its actors.
“We will be very happy to evaluate all the projects that brands of fashion, design, and lifestyle want to present to us. I speak of a project because this place has the aspiration to become a promoter of culture, a stage for values, a publisher through which we can launch messages that can speak to the world,” says Valeriano Antonioli, CEO of Lungarno Collection.
From the second floor of the building, on the other hand, the private dimension of this project unfolds: 73 rooms and suites welcome guests into an oasis of privacy and silence, enveloping them in timeless elegance, the stylistic hallmark of Architect Michele Bönan, who oversaw all Lungarno Collection properties. The classic style recalls the tradition of Milanese residences but with contemporary details inspired by Tuscan craftsmanship, such as leather handles and rattan boiserie, in a tribute to the historic places of the Ferragamo family.
These are all values and goals that Portrait Milano shares with the project partners to make this new destination a gateway and synthesis integrating people, cultures, experiences and spaces; a symbol of connection between the most unique and authentic essence of Milan and the international dimension towards which the city is projected.