Why you should experience Babouche in Milan, Italy.
Babouche is a polished artisan pastry shop where XXII Marzo's early-twentieth-century residential quarter meets Martina Besana's French-influenced baking, an in-house pastry laboratory and a concept created to carry handmade desserts far beyond the conventional breakfast hours.
Set along Via Maestri Campionesi near Via Cadore and just steps from Parco Vittorio Formentano, the pastry shop occupies an eastern Milan pocket shaped by early-twentieth-century residences, the surviving architecture of the former Verziere and contemporary interventions inserted among the older streets. The principal room centers on a broad pastry counter, with baking utensils and cake molds incorporated into walls lined with white timber boxes, greenery and Provençal references. An adjoining glazed veranda extends the interior into a brighter room whose furnishings continue the French domestic character established inside. A second outdoor area broadens the setting further, allowing breakfast, afternoon pastry and later drinks to unfold across spaces with markedly different degrees of enclosure. The result is an XXII Marzo pastry shop whose French decorative character and unusually extended daily rhythm give handmade sweets a setting designed for lingering beyond the morning rush.
What you should know about Babouche.
Babouche is best known for Martina Besana's decision to create an artisan pastry shop that remained relevant after Milan's conventional dessert counters had closed for the evening. Besana developed the idea after repeatedly finding restaurant desserts disappointing and recognizing how few specialist pastry shops in the city continued service after 8 p.m.; when Babouche opened in 2016, its original schedule stretched to 10:30 p.m. That late-service premise shaped the business beyond its hours, turning a pastry laboratory into a day-long operation moving through breakfast, lunch, gelato and aperitivo before returning to sweets after dinner. The French name translates as “slipper,” a deliberate reference to domestic comfort inspired by the shop's location inside a newly constructed residential building and Besana's intention to make the room feel closer to a home than a conventional retail counter. French technique supplied the corresponding culinary foundation: pastry chefs prepared croissants each morning using French recipes adapted through fillings such as pistachio cream, ricotta, chocolate, custard and preserves. By 2018, Babouche had developed that influence into a broader Provençal program, using lavender-themed summer events and aperitivo formats to connect the original baking premise with evening hospitality. Besana later carried her pastry work into another Milanese institution when she joined Marco Maccarini and his partners in the 2022 revival of Osteria Valtellina, taking responsibility for a dessert program that moved through marron glacé preparations, bavarois, pistachio cheesecake and pavlova.
Laminated dough establishes the morning repertoire through croissants, pain au chocolat and pan suisse, where repeated folds create crisp exterior layers around softer interiors. Pistachio cream, chocolate, ricotta, custard and fruit preserves move those pastries from plain viennoiserie toward richer filled forms, with the filling introduced after the structure of the dough has been established. Madeleine, brioche, bomboloni and cream-filled maritozzi shift the pastry case through baked, fried and enriched doughs before individual cakes introduce mousse, fruit tartlets and more elaborate layered compositions. Chocolate work adds pralines, biscuits and small pastries, giving the counter another family of textures beyond laminated and leavened dough. Artisan gelato extends production into the afternoon through familiar flavors and less conventional combinations, continuing the original idea of a pastry laboratory whose work changes with the hour. Quiche, croque and filled milk rolls then bridge the sweet program into lunch and aperitivo, preserving the French influence that has accompanied Babouche since its opening.
How to fold Babouche into your trip.
Babouche works as the pastry endpoint for an afternoon tracing the surrounding eastern districts through a former hospital cemetery, Milan's vanished wholesale produce market and the craftsmanship of the city's Liberty residential boom.
Begin at Rotonda della Besana, created after the Ospedale Maggiore required additional burial capacity and began constructing a new cemetery complex in 1695 under engineer Attilio Arrigoni. San Michele ai Nuovi Sepolcri rose at its center after work began in 1719, and the surrounding portico reached completion in 1731 with financial support from silk merchant Giambattista Annone; after burial use ended, the complex passed through roles including barracks, hay storage and hospital laundry before becoming municipal property and eventually the permanent home of MUBA in 2014. Continue to Palazzina Liberty Dario Fo e Franca Rame, designed by Alberto Migliorini in 1908 as the café-restaurant and commercial meeting point of the new Verziere wholesale fruit-and-vegetable market. The surrounding market operated from 1911 until 1965, then disappeared as Luigi Caccia Dominioni designed the public park that replaced it; the surviving pavilion entered another consequential period in 1974 when Dario Fo and Franca Rame's La Comune turned it into a theater laboratory associated with performances, acting instruction and political gatherings. Conclude at Casa Campanini, the residence architect Alfredo Campanini constructed for himself between 1904 and 1906 after drawing inspiration from Giuseppe Sommaruga's Palazzo Castiglioni. Michele Vedani sculpted the female figures flanking its entrance, Alessandro Mazzucotelli executed elaborate vegetal ironwork, and Campanini designed details extending through stained glass, façade ornament and interior decoration, making his own home a concentrated demonstration of Milanese Liberty craftsmanship. The progression moves from an Ospedale Maggiore burial complex repeatedly repurposed across three centuries through a market pavilion transformed by Fo and Rame into experimental theater and Campanini's synthesis of architecture, sculpture, glass and ironwork, revealing successive forms of reinvention around XXII Marzo.
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