Why you should experience Mag La Pusterla in Milan, Italy.
Mag La Pusterla is a convivial cocktail bar where Sant'Ambrogio's medieval inheritance, old-Milan café character, Farmily's contemporary bartending culture and a hidden second layer of internationally recognized mixology converge inside a historic neighborhood address near the former city walls.
Set along Via Edmondo de Amicis near Via Giosuè Carducci and just steps from Pusterla di Sant'Ambrogio, the cocktail bar occupies Sant'Ambrogio where the western historic center tightens around medieval remnants, Renaissance religious complexes and streets following the former Cerchia dei Navigli. Original mid-century furnishings and the marble counter preserve much of the former café's visual weight, joined by dark timber and a planted courtyard that gives the address several distinct rhythms between street, bar and garden. Bartenders remain physically close to the room around the counter, making preparation part of the evening before cocktails move outward into tables that retain the informality of a neighborhood café. The result is a Milan drinking address whose older architectural character supports a more contemporary culture of cocktails, food and late-evening social life without losing the accumulated texture of the premises it inherited.
What you should know about Mag La Pusterla.
Mag La Pusterla is best known for Flavio Angiolillo and his partners turning the closure of the historic Caffè La Pusterla during the 2020 pandemic into an expansion designed to preserve their bartending team and mark the tenth anniversary of the original MAG Cafè. Angiolillo was born in Rome in 1984 and grew up in France, entering restaurant work at sixteen before moving into cocktails at twenty-two. His return to Italy at that age was initially driven by a desire to learn Italian. Entrepreneurship followed at twenty-five, and MAG Cafè became the foundation for a group that subsequently produced Iter, Backdoor43 and 1930. Employees gradually became partners as the operation expanded. Francesco Bonazzi, Carlo Dall'Asta, Benjamin Cavagna, Marco Russo, Loris Melis and Lorenzo Raimondi joined Angiolillo within the ownership circle, placing working bartenders and operators inside the development of the wider group. The pandemic created the decisive turn for La Pusterla. Restrictions at MAG Cafè threatened part of the staff, prompting Angiolillo and his partners to take over Caffè La Pusterla after its March 2020 closure and open the new bar that September. Much of the inherited 1940s furniture and marble counter survived the transition, connecting the new operation directly with the older café. Iter chef Vincenzo Migniuolo developed the original kitchen concept, extending a collaboration between cooking and cocktails already established elsewhere in the group. The inaugural drinks program performed a different act of preservation, bringing together creations developed across MAG's preceding decade with new cocktails dispensed from taps. Another chapter arrived in January 2025 when 1930 relocated beneath Mag La Pusterla after twelve years as Milan's secret-address speakeasy. Benjamin Cavagna directs the subterranean bar, which reached No. 43 in The World's 50 Best Bars in 2025 and No. 22 in the inaugural Europe's 50 Best Bars in 2026. The move transformed the Via de Amicis address into the public threshold for two generations of Angiolillo's Milan cocktail culture, joining the project created to protect a team during the pandemic with the internationally recognized speakeasy that Farmily had started in 2013.
Negroni del Marinaio supplies the clearest route into Mag La Pusterla's drinking style through Campari, Vermouth del Professore, Old Sailor Coffee and Mezcal Bruxo, placing coffee and agave smoke against the familiar bitter structure before the cocktail reaches the glass directly from a tap. Americano ai fiori lightens that approach through Campari and Cinzano 1757 Rosso joined by red-fruit tea and St-Germain, shifting the emphasis toward fruit and florals. Giappone develops the drinks in another direction through gin infused with shiso, ginger beer, lime juice, sage syrup, absinthe and cardamom, layering herbal freshness with spice and anise. More recent signatures preserve the same appetite for reworking familiar structures. Americano #2 combines Fusetti bitter, Amaro Bello and roasted-tea Tripwine No. 2 with soy water, introducing salinity and roasted notes into the aperitivo form. Basil Smash #2 moves through rosemary-infused Malfy gin, Oleato, tomato water, basil and saline solution, allowing vegetal aromas and savory acidity to carry the drink. The bar's changing lists have also used techniques such as milk washing, infused spirits and extensive advance preparation to shift work away from the moment of service, leaving the bartender freer to concentrate on the person across the counter. Mag La Pusterla consequently develops its strongest drinking experience through a continuous exchange between recognizable cocktail structures and unexpected ingredients, with taps, infusions, tea, coffee, herbs and savory preparations altering familiar forms.
How to fold Mag La Pusterla into your trip.
Mag La Pusterla works as the drinking anchor for an afternoon moving through Sant'Ambrogio's surviving medieval defenses, the church that became inseparable from Milan's patron saint and an Olivetan monastery later transformed into Italy's principal museum of science and technology.
Begin at Pusterla di Sant'Ambrogio, originally created in 1167 as part of the medieval walls raised after Frederick Barbarossa's destruction of Milan and positioned between the great monastery of Sant'Ambrogio and San Vittore. Its ancient form disappeared into later buildings after the sixteenth century before demolition in 1937 exposed surviving remains. Architect Gino Chierici reconstructed the gate in 1939, incorporating two towers and twin pointed arches into his interpretation of the medieval structure. Continue to Sant'Ambrogio, begun by Bishop Ambrose in 379 over a necropolis outside the Roman walls. Ambrose transferred the bodies of martyrs Protasius and Gervasius into the new Basilica Martyrum in 386 and was buried beside them after his death in 397; centuries later Archbishop Angilbert II commissioned Volvinus to create the golden altar, and Donato Bramante began work on the adjoining complex in 1492 under Ludovico il Moro. Conclude at Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, established through the ambitions of engineer Guido Ucelli and opened to the public on February 15, 1953 with an exhibition devoted to Leonardo's science and technology. The institution occupies a sixteenth-century Olivetan monastery damaged during the 1943 bombing of Milan and subsequently restored for the museum, whose Leonardo collection grew around historical models interpreting the artist's technical drawings. The progression moves from Chierici's reconstruction of a medieval defensive threshold through Ambrose, Volvinus and Bramante's successive contributions to Milanese religious history into Ucelli's conversion of a Renaissance monastic complex into a national institution devoted to scientific and technological culture.
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