Why you should experience Rivareno in Milan, Italy.
Rivareno is an exacting gelateria where Brera's dense historic fabric, Nicola Greco and Lynn Ya Ping Greco's entrepreneurial leap, Leonardo Ragazzi's Bolognese gelato craft and two decades of experimentation converge around small-batch production and more than 100 recipes developed from Italian and international culinary traditions.
Set along Via Mercato near Via Ponte Vetero and just steps from San Carpoforo, the gelateria occupies the northern edge of Brera within a web of narrow streets connecting the district with Castello Sforzesco. The Via Mercato shop became one of Rivareno's early Milan addresses as the company expanded beyond its original Viale Col di Lana laboratory, giving the growing brand a second position inside the city where it had launched. Gelato remains concealed inside traditional steel pozzetti, with production carried out repeatedly through the day in batches capped at four to five kilograms to keep the product close to its freshly churned state. The result is a Brera gelateria where a project conceived between Bologna and Milan still centers its physical operation on the production system Leonardo Ragazzi helped establish at its beginning.
What you should know about Rivareno.
Rivareno is best known for former Ducati executive Nicola Greco, BBC journalist Lynn Ya Ping Greco, Bolognese gelato maker Leonardo Ragazzi and lawyer Vittorio Paolucci turning a taste of pine-nut gelato into a company that began in Milan and expanded across four continents. Ragazzi reached gelato by an unusual route. Early in the new millennium, he visited a flea market and returned with four vintage Fabbri amarena jars, prompting an interest in food that initially pointed toward opening a restaurant with a friend. That plan collapsed, and Ragazzi redirected his attention toward gelato. He opened Cremeria Funivia on Via Porrettana in Bologna in 2001, taking the name from the old funicular that once departed nearby for San Luca. Nicola Greco entered the picture from a completely different profession as former Worldwide Vice President at Ducati during Federico Minoli's presidency. Greco brought his wife Lynn to Cremeria Funivia, where a pine-nut flavor converted someone who had previously shown little interest in gelato. Lynn proposed taking the product to America. Greco approached Ragazzi and offered to purchase his recipes, yet the gelato maker declined the sale and proposed forming a company together. Their handshake came in 2004. Paolucci joined as the legal specialist, and the partners divided responsibilities with Ragazzi developing gelato, Lynn directing shops and customers and Nicola building the network. An American launch was initially planned, but an economic downturn redirected the first shop to Milan. Rivareno opened on Viale Col di Lana in April 2005. Recognition came rapidly, with Gambero Rosso and Golosario including the laboratory during its second year and Golosaria awarding Rivareno its 2008 prize for Italy's best gelateria. Expansion followed through Turin, Ferrara, Milano Marittima, Rome, Asti and other Italian cities before Sydney opened in 2013. By 2015 the network had fourteen Italian shops plus international operations and €6.2 million in sales. Twenty years after the Milan debut, Rivareno marked 2025 with 34 shops worldwide and openings extending its reach to New York.
Ragazzi's approach begins with richness controlled through ingredient ratios, particularly the balance among cream, milk proteins and sugars that produces Rivareno's dense texture. Cremino RivaReno translates the layered Italian chocolate into gelato through white chocolate, hazelnut paste and cream streaked with warm gianduia. Alice combines mascarpone with Marsala Vergine Soleras and receives another pour of gianduia at service. Contessa joins Sicilian almond paste with hazelnut paste and amaretti, then adds caramelized almonds for crunch. Cremino Dark reverses the chocolate register through dark chocolate, cream and hazelnut paste crossed by pistachio sauce. Ganache Fondente melts dark chocolate into fresh cream to reproduce the softness of French ganache. Cassata uses Sicilian sheep's-milk ricotta, candied orange and citron with drops of Strega. Cioccolato Extra Fondente turns to single-origin Madagascar chocolate for a deeper cocoa profile. Menta Stracciata infuses a Fior di Panna base with peppermint before adding dark-chocolate shavings. Sorbet production removes dairy entirely and raises fresh fruit to as much as 65 percent of the recipe, leaving water and sugar to control structure. Rivareno churns no more than four to five kilograms at once and repeats production as sales require, keeping each batch inside steel pozzetti until service. More than 100 flavors have grown from that system, yet the Cremino, Alice and Contessa recipes still connect the current Via Mercato counter directly with Ragazzi's original work.
How to fold Rivareno into your trip.
Rivareno works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing Brera from an ancient religious site through Habsburg cultural reform into the Napoleonic creation of Milan's great public painting collection.
Begin at San Carpoforo, where the first proven evidence of a church dates to 813 and later medieval references place the chapel within Porta Comasina. Federico Borromeo promoted reconstruction during the seventeenth century, and Angelo Puttini developed the subsequent Latin-cross church after 1624. The parish was suppressed in 1787, the building became a military archive under the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1809 and Milan acquired it in 1864. The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera received the former church in 1993 for painting, sculpture, decoration and graphic arts. Continue to Palazzo di Brera, built over the former Umiliati monastery and reshaped after the Jesuits took possession of the site. Francesco Maria Richini began the seventeenth-century rebuilding, creating the double-order courtyard, then the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 allowed Maria Theresa of Austria to assemble the Biblioteca Braidense, astronomical observatory, botanical garden and Accademia di Belle Arti around the complex. Giuseppe Piermarini completed the entrance and courtyard, where Antonio Canova's Napoleon as Mars later took the central position. Conclude at Pinacoteca di Brera, formally established in 1809 after an educational collection had already developed beside the academy from 1776. Napoleonic campaigns sent paintings from churches and religious institutions across conquered Italian territories to Milan, building a public collection whose holdings came to include Mantegna's Dead Christ, Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin, Piero della Francesca's Brera Madonna and Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus. The progression moves from San Carpoforo's medieval religious foundation through Maria Theresa's concentration of science and arts at Palazzo di Brera into Napoleon's public painting collection, tracing the institutions that shaped Brera before gelato at Rivareno.
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