Why you should experience Da Giulia in Milan, Italy.
Da Giulia is a deeply personal seafood restaurant where Sempione's neighborhood dining culture meets Giulia Grande's Bisceglie roots, Gianni Galantino's southern Italian heritage and more than two decades of family-run Mediterranean cooking.
Set along Piazza Gramsci near Via Piero della Francesca and just steps from Via Paolo Sarpi, the restaurant occupies a pedestrian square formed where the old road toward Varese intersected the early-twentieth-century expansion axis of Via Procaccini. Dark timber ceilings and boiserie establish the principal dining room, joined by marble flooring, substantial curtains and Mediterranean decorative pieces. Paintings by Marco Tempesta introduce sunlit southern landscapes across the walls, with antique sailing motifs and a large aquarium carrying the maritime theme through the two internal dining areas. The outdoor tables spread into the tree-lined pedestrian square, creating a second dining environment separated from the darker, more traditional rooms inside. The result is a Sempione restaurant whose family character extends naturally from a distinctly personal interior into Piazza Gramsci.
What you should know about Da Giulia.
Da Giulia is best known for Gianni Galantino and Giulia Grande's family restaurant, founded in 2003 after Gianni developed his career in hospitality from an early age and chose Milan for a seafood project centered on the couple's southern Italian roots. Giulia, born in Bisceglie and established in Milan decades before the restaurant opened, became its namesake chef, grounding the kitchen in the Puglian cooking she carried north and the Sicilian traditions connected with Gianni. Their sons subsequently entered the operation: Alessandro works beside his mother in the kitchen, and Pierfabio joined his father in the dining room, turning the original husband-and-wife venture into a second-generation family enterprise. Critical recognition developed alongside that continuity, with the Guida Critica Golosa Lombardia awarding Da Giulia its Corona Radiosa as Miglior Tavola della Provincia repeatedly from 2014 through 2025. National exposure followed in 2022 when Giulia entered the eighth season of Alessandro Borghese 4 Ristoranti against El Pecà, T4 Bistrot Experience and Shannara 2 in a Milan competition devoted specifically to seafood restaurants. The episode designated fried seafood as its special category, and Da Giulia won the competition and its €5,000 prize, establishing the family operation as the program's chosen best seafood restaurant in Milan. Giulia's handmade approach remained central through the increased attention, preserving a working structure in which she and Alessandro command the kitchen and Gianni and Pierfabio maintain the family presence in the dining room.
Orecchiette begin with semolina from Senatore Cappelli wheat and grano arso, the toasted grain connecting Giulia's handmade pasta directly with Puglia before sea bream, asparagus, tomato and a fish fumet complete one longstanding preparation. Busiate move southward across the Mediterranean through Tumminia wheat from Castelvetrano, pistachio from Bronte and tuna bottarga, building a pasta dish around Sicilian grain, nuts and preserved fish. Piatto Crudo della Giulia leaves heat behind through red prawns and scampi from Mazara del Vallo prepared alla catalana beside red-tuna tartare, salad and citrus. Swordfish involtini return to cooking through the Sicilian practice of rolling seasoned fish, and tuna parmigiana layers the fish with zucchini and leek. Fresh pasta, bread and grissini are made in-house, with ancient-grain flours extending Giulia's handwork beyond individual dishes into the meal's basic starches. Cassata, cannoli filled to order with Castelvetrano ricotta and pistachio semifreddo complete the southern arc through pastry, fresh cheese and nuts.
How to fold Da Giulia into your trip.
Da Giulia works as the dining endpoint for an afternoon following the surrounding Sempione-Bullona district through Renaissance aristocratic architecture, Milan's tram-building industry and the city's nineteenth-century reinvention of funerary architecture.
Begin at Villa Simonetta, whose origins reach Gualtiero Bascapè, chancellor to Ludovico il Moro, who acquired the land from Ospedale Maggiore near the end of the fifteenth century for a country residence known as La Gualtiera. Ferrante Gonzaga acquired it in 1547 and commissioned Domenico Giunti to transform the property into a representative suburban residence, adding lateral wings to create the U-shaped composition and introducing Gonzaga fresco decoration before the Simonetta family acquired it in 1555. Continue to Fabbrica del Vapore, whose industrial history began with Carminati, Toselli & C., founded in 1899 by Antonio Carminati, Giuseppe Pozzi and Carlo Toselli to construct and maintain railway and tram rolling stock. Expansion between 1907 and 1920 culminated in a workforce of 1,350 by 1919, and the works produced the prototype 1501 in 1928, beginning a series of more than 500 Milan tramcars whose descendants remain inseparable from the city's street image. Conclude at Cimitero Monumentale, where Milan's 1860 competition for a unified municipal cemetery eventually selected Carlo Maciachini's scheme, approved in 1863 and opened for burials in 1866. Maciachini organized the complex through Gothic, Lombard Romanesque, Pisan and Byzantine references; its principal sequence developed through the central ossuary completed in 1873 and the Famedio completed in 1887, later joined by generations of funerary commissions that turned the cemetery into a vast survey of Milanese sculpture and architecture. The progression moves from Giunti's sixteenth-century reconstruction of an aristocratic country residence through Carminati, Toselli & C.'s industrial production of Milan's tram fleet into Maciachini's civic architecture for the dead, tracing three radically different forms of design and patronage across the districts surrounding Piazza Gramsci.
Where your story begins.
Foresyte Travel reveals places that feel extraordinary long before you arrive.
Experience premium editorial crafted for luxury travelers.
