Why you should experience Guinness Harp Pub in Milan, Italy.
Guinness Harp Pub is a storied family-run pub where Città Studi's academic culture meets fifty years of Corbetta stewardship, among Milan's deepest whisky selections and a cocktail tradition now passing through its third generation.
Set along Piazza Leonardo da Vinci near Via Bonardi and just steps from the Politecnico di Milano, the pub occupies the social center of a university quarter shaped by Augusto Brusconi and Gaetano Moretti's early twentieth-century campus, later joined by works from Gio Ponti, Piero Portaluppi and Vittoriano Viganò. Dark timber, leather seating and a densely stocked back bar preserve much of the visual character the Corbetta family established during the pub's earliest years, giving the interior the familiarity of a room that has resisted wholesale reinvention. Whisky provides the deepest drinking experience through more than 200 labels, with Angelo Corbetta's knowledge of rare bottles turning the back bar into a collection extending far beyond the Guinness promised by the name. Cocktails bring the pub into its third generation through Riccardo Corbetta, whose changing lists combine classics with original drinks and contributions from fellow bartenders across Milan. The result is a genuine Città Studi institution whose longevity rests on a rare combination of family continuity, serious spirits knowledge and five decades spent alongside successive generations of Politecnico students and professors.
What you should know about Guinness Harp Pub.
Guinness Harp Pub is best known for three generations of Corbetta family stewardship that transformed an experiment in an unfamiliar drinking format into one of Città Studi's enduring gathering places. Riccardo Corbetta, grandfather of the present generation, established the pub with his son Angelo in 1976, when Angelo recalled that Milan had virtually no venues using the word “pub” and the family had never entered one themselves; they imagined what such a place should look like and created their own interpretation with carpeting and leather armchairs. Angelo already operated another venue at Edilnord, yet the workload surrounding his father's new project drew him away from that business and into the Piazza Leonardo da Vinci pub, beginning the handover that eventually placed him at its center. The family initially ran an unconventional schedule from early morning through the evening aperitivo, then experimented with ideas well ahead of local demand, including an unsuccessful attempt to introduce brunch during the early 1980s. Drinks developed more successfully: Angelo competed in cocktail contests during his younger years and built an exceptional interest in whisky, eventually assembling a selection exceeding 200 labels and establishing dedicated tasting evenings around the collection. His children extended those specialties in separate directions, with Riccardo taking responsibility for cocktails and Francesco for the kitchen as parents Angelo and Pina remained involved in the family business. Riccardo introduced cocktail lists renewed twice yearly, divided between established classics and house interpretations, then added a recurring signature drink created by bartender friends as a deliberate connection with colleagues elsewhere in Milan; he also represented Harp Pub Guinness in the Milan stage of the 2018 Mix Contest Italy Tour. The pub reached its fiftieth anniversary in 2026 with much of its original interior character intact, turning the Corbettas' decision to invent a pub they had never personally experienced into a half-century family enterprise now moving toward Riccardo and Francesco.
Angelo Corbetta's whisky collection gives the back bar its deepest specialty, stretching past 200 labels and rewarding slower exploration across Scotch, bourbon and other distillates selected through decades of personal interest. Dedicated tasting evenings draw that collection out of the shelves, allowing individual bottlings, regions and production styles to become the focus rather than treating whisky as a secondary spirit behind beer. Riccardo's cocktail work shifts the emphasis toward modern bartending through a list revised twice each year, where established drinks sit beside house creations and recipes contributed by fellow bartenders. Esmeralda once joined cachaça, Caol Ila, St-Germain, lime and sugar into a smoky sour structure, and Malone Punch combined rum, citrus, fortified tea, honey syrup and cardamom bitters in a teacup presentation. Guinness still anchors the pub's Irish association, yet the Corbettas have spent decades broadening the drinking culture around it through whisky, cocktails, cognac and rum. A night at Harp becomes most distinctive when Angelo's accumulated spirits knowledge and Riccardo's contemporary cocktail practice are experienced together, placing two generations of bartending on opposite sides of the same family history.
How to fold Guinness Harp Pub into your trip.
Guinness Harp Pub works as the evening endpoint for an afternoon exploring the architecture, design experimentation and scientific institutions that gave Città Studi its unusual concentration of twentieth-century intellectual life.
Begin at Facoltà di Architettura del Politecnico di Milano, conceived as an autonomous home for the architecture school after its establishment in 1933 and developed from a 1953 project by Giordano Forti, Gio Ponti and Piero Portaluppi. The complex organized teaching around a glazed courtyard and distinctive amphitheater classrooms lit through roof wells; Ponti's Trifoglio and Nave later joined the composition, followed by Vittoriano Viganò's expansion, creating an exceptional concentration of major Milanese architects inside a single academic campus. Continue to Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, designed by Piero Portaluppi between 1934 and 1936 with a façade clad in pink and gray Ornavasso marble and interiors enriched by an exceptional range of stone. Its sculptural spiral staircase originated in Portaluppi and BBPR's Casa del Sabato degli Sposi for the 1933 Milan Triennale before being transferred into the residence, and a major restoration later prepared the principal floor for Massimo De Carlo's exhibition program. Conclude at Orto Botanico Città Studi, created in 2001 from the reclaimed grounds of Cascina Rosa, a historic agricultural property acquired by the Spanish Rosales family in 1637. The University of Milan developed the 25,000-square-meter garden for botanical research and teaching, assembling plant collections around scientific and ecological themes and establishing it as the city's third academic botanical garden alongside Brera and Toscolano Maderno. The progression moves from Ponti, Portaluppi and Forti's experiments in architectural education through Portaluppi and BBPR's migration of Triennale design into Casa Corbellini-Wassermann and into the university-led conversion of Cascina Rosa for botanical research, revealing how Città Studi repeatedly joined design experimentation with academic purpose.
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