Why you should experience Cheers Pub in Milan, Italy.
Cheers Pub is a convivial beer house where Casoretto's independent neighborhood character meets Franco Balzi's Irish-pub philosophy, Czech tank-beer culture and a drinking room shaped around draught service, rock music and communal sport.
Set along Via Casoretto near Via Teodosio and just steps from Santa Maria Bianca della Misericordia, the pub occupies a northeastern Milan pocket that grew from agricultural land surrounding a fifteenth-century monastic complex into a closely packed residential quarter during the twentieth century. Dark timber, beer insignia and an unpolished collection of pub furnishings establish the room's Irish reference without turning it into a theatrical reproduction of Dublin. Draught taps command the bar, placing beer service at the visual center as screens distribute major football, rugby and cycling broadcasts across the surrounding tables. Rock music carries through ordinary evenings, then major sporting fixtures and Saint Patrick's celebrations shift attention toward collective drinking and the room's communal energy. The result is a Casoretto pub whose neighborhood scale supports an unusually consequential place in Italy's modern draught-beer history.
What you should know about Cheers Pub.
Cheers Pub is best known for Franco Balzi's decision to make his independent Milan pub the first permanent Italian outlet for tank-served, unpasteurized Pilsner Urquell. Balzi was born in Milan and worked in the pub industry for a large company before leaving corporate hospitality in 2010 to establish his own operation, initially pouring Irish beers from the taps. Expansion into a neighboring vacant wine shop gave him room to reconsider the beer program, and his search for a product unavailable elsewhere in Milan led to Pilsner Urquell's Tankovna system. Franco and his wife Sonia traveled to the Czech Republic as their engagement with Czech beer deepened, and Balzi committed valuable floor area to two 500-liter tanks even though their installation reduced space available for customers. Pilsner Urquell selected Cheers during the 2015 Milano Beer Week for Italy's first permanent tank installation after the unpasteurized beer had made its Italian debut that year at the Czech Republic pavilion during Expo Milano. Luca Beretta, then director of Pilsner Urquell's Italian business unit, joined world Master Bartender champion Pulcherio Scutti and Pilsner Urquell beer master Robert Lobovsky for the inaugural event; nearly 3,000 people drank from the system during its first ten days. The experiment subsequently placed Cheers within Pilsner Urquell's international Tankovna network, and the Milan installation preceded the brand's broader Italian distribution of unfiltered, unpasteurized beer from traditional 25-liter wooden barrels in 2016. Balzi's original Irish concept consequently acquired a second beer culture through a technical decision that connected a Casoretto neighborhood pub directly with brewing traditions from PlzeΕ.
Guinness supplies the stout foundation through roasted malt, restrained bitterness and the dense nitrogenated head associated with its draught service. Forst Pils moves toward a brighter lager profile, and Weihenstephaner Hefe Weiss introduces unfiltered wheat beer with the fuller body and fermentation character of a Bavarian weissbier. Italian independent brewing enters through L'Olmaia's Starship, an English-style bitter, then Il Mastio's Corrosipa develops an American IPA profile through herbal, floral and lightly citrus aromas. Rifle shifts into Session IPA territory with a golden appearance and citrus produced through dry hopping, extending hop character without reproducing the heavier structure of stronger IPA styles. Burgers, nachos with peppers, jalapeΓ±os and cheese, hummus with feta and pita, and the pub's Irish-brunch program give those pours salty, fatty and spiced accompaniments designed for extended drinking. Stout, pils, weissbier, bitter and IPA create distinct malt, fermentation and hop registers across the taps, making draught beer the organizing principle of the evening.
How to fold Cheers Pub into your trip.
Cheers Pub works as the evening endpoint for an exploration of Casoretto's transition from an isolated religious settlement through twentieth-century urbanization into a neighborhood where private artistic work became part of Milan's cultural life.
Begin at Santa Maria Bianca della Misericordia, whose origins reach Pietro Tanzi's suburban property and the small church he restored in 1404 before bringing Canonici Regolari from Santa Maria della Frigionaia in Lucca; the first prior of the new community was elected in 1406. Visconti and Sforza patronage supported the monastery, a major humanist library developed there during the fifteenth century and the present church arose during the 1470s in a project associated with Guiniforte Solari before sixteenth-century interventions connected Pellegrino Tibaldi and Martino Bassi with its interior transformation. Continue to Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, designed by Piero Portaluppi between 1934 and 1936 for the Corbellini family as Milanese residential architecture moved decisively into its modern phase. Portaluppi worked through precious stone and exact geometric composition inside the residence, and its helical marble staircase carried forward an architectural solution he had explored for the Casa del Sabato per gli Sposi at Milan's V Triennale, embedding experimental exhibition design within a private Casoretto commission. Conclude at Spazio Tadini, established by Francesco Tadini and Melina Scalise in the former Grafiche Marucelli publishing premises where painter and writer Emilio Tadini maintained his home and studio. Events began there in 2006 and the cultural association followed in 2008, preserving Tadini's paintings, books, notebooks and studio workspace alongside an archive devoted to his work and a continuing program of exhibitions, literature, music, theater and dance. The progression moves from Tanzi's fifteenth-century religious foundation and its humanist culture through Portaluppi's twentieth-century architectural experimentation into the preservation of Emilio Tadini's working environment, tracing Casoretto's transformation through patronage, design and artistic production.
Where your story begins.
Foresyte Travel reveals places that feel extraordinary long before you arrive.
Experience premium editorial crafted for luxury travelers.
