Why you should experience La Locanda del Gatto Rosso Caffe & Bistrot in Milan, Italy.
La Locanda del Gatto Rosso Caffe & Bistrot is a polished all-day café where Duomo's concentration of twentieth-century architecture and contemporary art meets the Loiacono family's second-generation Milanese hospitality beneath the arcades of Palazzo Bolchini.
Set along Piazza Filippo Meda near Via Case Rotte and just steps from Piazza della Scala, the café occupies the portico of Palazzo Bolchini, looking directly across the square toward Arnaldo Pomodoro's bronze Disco Grande. Pier Giulio Magistretti's eight-storey building wraps the northern side of the piazza with geometric mosaic flooring beneath its arcades, giving the outdoor tables an architectural setting markedly different from the narrow medieval streets nearby. Inside, contemporary artworks and temporary exhibitions extend the square's artistic character into a modern room designed to shift naturally from morning coffee and pastry through lunch and aperitivo. The result is a Duomo café where the Loiacono family's hospitality occupies a distinctive piece of Milanese architecture with twentieth-century design and contemporary art immediately surrounding the table.
What you should know about La Locanda del Gatto Rosso Caffe & Bistrot.
La Locanda del Gatto Rosso Caffe & Bistrot is best known for extending the Loiacono family's restaurant history into Palazzo Bolchini, creating a contemporary counterpart to the family's historic La Locanda del Gatto Rosso beside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The family's Milanese hospitality history now exceeds thirty years and has passed to its second generation, with brothers Andrea and Stefano Loiacono continuing the business established by their parents. Their original restaurant developed around traditional Milanese and Italian cooking, giving the later Piazza Filippo Meda project an inherited culinary foundation rather than beginning as an unrelated café concept. The second address introduced a substantially different cultural setting. Palazzo Bolchini was commissioned by Ada Dell'Acqua in Bolchini and Ferruccio Bolchini from architect Pier Giulio Magistretti, who developed the building between 1927 and 1930 as part of the creation of the new piazza within the former San Paolo district. Its reinforced-concrete structure, geometric portico mosaics, Art Deco accents and Novecento character made the building one of Magistretti's major interventions during the same period as his work around Galleria del Corso. BBPR returned to Palazzo Bolchini in 1973 for an extensive interior reconstruction, adding another major Milanese architectural name to the site decades before the Loiaconos established their café beneath its arcades. The family subsequently incorporated contemporary exhibitions and cultural events into the Caffè & Bistrot, using the new venue to connect hospitality with visual art. Arnaldo Pomodoro's Disco Grande stands directly outside, giving that program an immediate relationship with one of Italy's major postwar sculptors. The second-generation expansion consequently carried a longstanding family restaurant into a setting shaped by Magistretti, BBPR and Pomodoro, shifting the Gatto Rosso name from a traditional dining room beside the Galleria toward an all-day café embedded in Milan's twentieth-century artistic landscape.
Breakfast establishes the café's all-day rhythm through espresso and cappuccino with croissants and other pastries, giving the portico its quietest service before lunch changes the pace. Savory cooking then expands into pasta, salads, sandwiches and Italian café dishes designed for a shorter midday meal than the family's historic restaurant. Aperitivo creates the decisive transition later in the day, moving the table from coffee toward cocktails, wine and small savory accompaniments as office activity around Piazza Meda subsides. The outdoor tables strengthen that change of tempo by placing drinks directly opposite Pomodoro's sculpture, with the surrounding stone facades and porticoes enclosing the square around them. Contemporary exhibitions inside continue the visual emphasis after moving indoors, allowing art to remain part of the experience without turning the café into a formal gallery. Morning pastry, midday cooking and evening drinks consequently develop as successive expressions of the same all-day format, with the architecture and art of Piazza Meda providing continuity as the service changes around them.
How to fold La Locanda del Gatto Rosso Caffe & Bistrot into your trip.
La Locanda del Gatto Rosso Caffe & Bistrot works as the refreshment anchor for an afternoon connecting Milanese Neoclassicism, Alessandro Manzoni's literary household and the banking collections that transformed several neighboring palaces into an art museum.
Begin at Palazzo Anguissola Antona Traversi, where Count Antonio Carlo Anguissola commissioned Carlo Felice Soave to reconstruct a sixteenth-century aristocratic residence before his marriage to Bianca Busca Arconati Visconti. Soave's work between 1775 and 1778 converted the house into one of Milan's admired Neoclassical residences, then lawyer Giovanni Battista Traversi acquired it in 1817 and engaged Luigi Canonica in 1829 to develop the wing facing the present Via Alessandro Manzoni. Continue to Casa Manzoni, purchased by Alessandro Manzoni in October 1813 as his growing family sought a permanent Milan home. Manzoni remained there until his death in 1873; subsequent owner Bernardo Arnaboldi Gazzaniga preserved access to the writer's study and bedroom, and Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde acquired the property in 1937 before its transfer to Milan for the Centro Nazionale Studi Manzoniani. Restoration resumed after World War II and the Museo Manzoniano opened in 1965. Conclude at Gallerie d'Italia - Milano, whose museum route connects Palazzo Anguissola Antona Traversi with Palazzo Brentani and the former Banca Commerciale Italiana headquarters. Giuseppe Brentani had commissioned Palazzo Brentani by 1720, Luigi Canonica remodeled its exterior in 1829 with medallions portraying figures including Leonardo da Vinci and Alessandro Volta, and Giuseppe De Finetti redesigned upper interiors in 1935. The museum now carries visitors from nineteenth-century collections into Cantiere del '900, with Umberto Boccioni among the artists linking the complex to Italian modernism. The progression moves from Soave and Canonica's reshaping of aristocratic Milan through Manzoni's nineteenth-century literary household into the palaces and banking collections assembled as Gallerie d'Italia, tracing private patronage, literature and institutional collecting through the streets surrounding Piazza Meda.
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