Why you should experience Notorious Cinemas in Milan, Italy.
Notorious Cinemas is an ambitious multiplex where Sesto San Giovanni's reinvention beyond heavy industry, Guglielmo Marchetti's expansion from film distribution into exhibition, Andrea Stratta's two decades of cinema leadership and IMAX technology converge inside the first theater created for the Notorious Cinemas circuit.
Set inside Centro Sarca on Via Milanese near Viale Sarca and just steps from Villa Torretta, the multiplex occupies 5,536 square meters on the shopping center's upper level at the boundary between Milan and Sesto San Giovanni. Ten auditoriums place electronically controlled reclining seats, footrests and individual tables across the complex, giving the physical act of watching a film considerably more room than conventional multiplex seating. The IMAX auditorium changes the scale again through dual digital projection, a larger gently curved screen, patented theater geometry and laser-aligned audio calibrated for the room, placing image and sound at the center of the format. A 400-square-meter Disney, Marvel and Lucas area extends the cinema into another strand of screen culture through environments dedicated to Disney Princess, Frozen, Avengers and Star Wars, making the Sesto complex the fullest early expression of the experiential model Marchetti and Stratta wanted to introduce to Italian cinema exhibition.
What you should know about Notorious Cinemas.
Notorious Cinemas is best known for becoming the first theater through which film producer and distributor Guglielmo Marchetti and veteran cinema executive Andrea Stratta tested an independent Italian multiplex circuit built around the physical experience of moviegoing. Marchetti had already developed Notorious Pictures across film acquisition, distribution and production when the group created Notorious Cinemas in January 2019, moving downstream from supplying films to controlling how audiences encountered them in theaters. The venture acquired an unusually experienced operator in Stratta, who had spent twenty years leading UCI Cinemas Italia and helped develop the country's largest multiscreen network before becoming chief executive of the new company. Sesto San Giovanni supplied their proving ground when Notorious took control of Centro Sarca's existing ten-screen Skyline multiplex on March 1, 2019 and kept films running as individual auditoriums closed sequentially for reconstruction. The completed theater debuted that September as Notorious Cinemas The Experience, turning the inherited Skyline into the circuit's prototype through new auditorium interiors, automated ticketing and a redesigned approach to audience service. Stratta made personal interaction another part of the concept, arguing that staff behavior had to match the physical quality of the rebuilt theaters rather than treating renovation alone as sufficient. The project also retained and incorporated the site's IMAX auditorium, giving the first Notorious property a premium large-format screen alongside nine conventional auditoriums from the beginning. A dedicated 400-square-meter family environment added licensed Disney, Marvel and Lucas installations, connecting the cinema with characters and franchises including Frozen, Avengers and Star Wars beyond their projection on screen. The Sesto experiment produced a striking commercial result after the pandemic disruption: during the first five months of 2022, Stratta reported attendance 29 percent above the corresponding 2019 performance of the former Skyline, even as the wider Italian theatrical market remained sharply below its pre-pandemic level. That performance made Sesto more than the first name on an expanding circuit, demonstrating that Marchetti and Stratta's attempt to rebuild an existing multiplex around comfort, technology and audience service had changed how strongly the same location performed.
IMAX provides the most technically distinct route through the ten auditoriums by combining two digital projectors so that brightness, sharpness and contrast exceed the theater's standard projection configuration. Its screen is larger, gently curved and positioned closer to the seating, with patented geometry expanding the projected image across more of the viewer's field of vision. Audio follows an equally controlled system: speakers are laser-aligned and calibrated for individual screenings, delivering uncompressed digital sound designed to remain consistent across different seating positions. Films prepared for the format pass through IMAX DMR digital remastering, which adjusts image definition, contrast and clarity before projection. The remaining nine auditoriums extend another part of the original 2019 redesign through electronically adjustable reclining chairs with footrests, tables, cupholders and USB charging, allowing each seat to operate as an individual viewing position. The complex also programs original-language films and event cinema beside mainstream releases, broadening the screens beyond conventional dubbed theatrical runs. These systems explain the logic behind The Experience more precisely than the name alone: Stratta's Sesto prototype altered projection, sound, seating and programming together, making the auditorium itself part of the reason to see a film theatrically.
How to fold Notorious Cinemas into your trip.
Notorious Cinemas works as the entertainment stop for an afternoon tracing Sesto San Giovanni from an aristocratic country residence through Breda's enormous manufacturing economy and the transformation of its surviving industrial machinery into a stage for contemporary music.
Begin at Villa Torretta, reconstructed around the turn of the seventeenth century for Countess Delia Spinola Anguissola as a country residence beyond Milan, with an autonomous community of farmers and artisans developing around the estate. Giovan Girolamo Marino subsequently enriched its interiors, and frescoes associated with the Procaccini workshop and Simone Barabino survive from the period before later ownership passed through the d'Este, Serbelloni and Busca families. Continue into the former Breda territory, where Società Ernesto Breda established its Sesto works in 1903 and expanded from steam locomotives into electric trains, aircraft, military production and components for the nuclear industry. Breda acquired Villa Torretta that same year, and the former noble residence eventually housed workers as the factories transformed Sesto into one of Italy's great industrial centers; the company later produced the Settebello train and early rolling stock for the Milan Metro. Conclude at Carroponte, the immense steel gantry erected during the 1930s inside the Breda complex and used industrially until the 1980s. Measuring 20 meters high, 60 meters wide and 200 meters long, the structure spent about two decades abandoned before restoration converted it into an outdoor performance venue where Ludovico Einaudi, Interpol, The Offspring, Sum 41, Counting Crows, Limp Bizkit and numerous Italian performers have appeared beneath the former factory crane. The progression moves from Spinola Anguissola and Marino's aristocratic Villa Torretta through Breda's railway and engineering empire into Carroponte's conversion from industrial infrastructure to concert stage, tracing the extraordinary territorial transformation surrounding Notorious Cinemas.
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