Sequoia Milano

Why you should experience Sequoia Milano in Milan, Italy.

Sequoia Milano is a late-night shisha lounge where Repubblica's after-dark culture, three young Milanese founders, Middle Eastern hookah traditions and a restaurant-to-club format converge within a glass-fronted venue built around the changing rhythm of an evening.

Set along Via Aldo Manuzio near Via Lazzaro Palazzi and just steps from the streets connecting Repubblica with Porta Venezia, the lounge occupies a modern room whose large windows expose its interior to the surrounding neighborhood. An 80-seat main room combines sofas and low tables with a terrace, giving hookah service a dedicated setting alongside cocktails and casual food. Music becomes more prominent later in the evening, with DJ programming spanning hip-hop, trap, reggaeton and commercial tracks after the earlier aperitivo and dinner period. The result is a Repubblica lounge where shisha, drinks, food and club programming were conceived as successive parts of the same night.

What you should know about Sequoia Milano.

Sequoia Milano is best known for emerging from the idea of three young Milanese entrepreneurs who set out to combine shisha with a bistrot, cocktail bar and late-night club near Piazza della Repubblica. The founders placed the narghilè at the center of the original concept, drawing on the Middle Eastern practice of passing flavored molasses smoke through water before it travels along the pipe. Sequoia was operating on Via Aldo Manuzio by 2019, with Italian and Mediterranean food sharing the room with hookah and music from its earliest established years. The venue developed the evening in stages. Aperitivo and dinner occupied the opening hours, followed by a stronger music program as the room moved toward its club phase. A terrace gave the hookah service an outdoor counterpart by 2020, when Moroccan tea had also joined cocktails beside the shisha program. The founders retained that multi-part structure as Sequoia widened its entertainment schedule. Middle Eastern music and traditional dance appeared beside contemporary club programming, and themed evenings added another route through the week. Recent Friday programming formalized the change of pace through an aperitivo beginning at 19:30 and a club session beginning at 23:30, with trap, reggaeton and hip-hop driving the later hours. Saturday programming has developed another drinks-led format through Open Wine evenings, pairing a two-hour wine service with an aperitivo plate before the tables turn toward the night session. Sequoia has consequently spent more than six years developing the founders' initial shisha-lounge idea into a venue whose timetable deliberately changes character between early-evening drinks, food, hookah and late-night music.

Fruit-flavored shisha establishes the principal ritual at the table, with the molasses heated in the bowl before smoke travels through water and into the long flexible hose. Cooling softens the temperature before the flavored smoke reaches the mouth, leaving fruit aromatics to define the selected blend. Moroccan tea brings a hot counterpart to the hookah and was already being served with shisha on the terrace by 2020. Cocktails provide a colder route through the bar, with the Friday Open Spritz format extending Aperol and other variations across the early evening. Saturday Open Wine changes the drink again through a dedicated two-hour wine session accompanied by an aperitivo plate. Pizza moves food toward a crisp baked base, followed by piadine folded around fillings and hamburgers built with selected beef and artisan bread. Fried snacks, mozzarella bites, potatoes and nachos supply smaller savory portions that fit between drinks and longer hookah sessions. Sequoia Milano is clearest in the sequence its founders built into the night, beginning around shisha and drinks before food and music gradually take greater possession of the room.

How to fold Sequoia Milano into your trip.

Sequoia Milano works as the evening endpoint for an afternoon tracing Milan's transition from horse-drawn transport through Liberty residential architecture into Piero Portaluppi's subterranean response to the demands of a growing twentieth-century city.

Begin at Casa Galimberti, where brothers Angelo and Giovanni Galimberti commissioned Giovanni Battista Bossi to create a residence between 1903 and 1905 on land previously occupied by the Società Anonima degli Omnibus. The company had operated Milan's horse-drawn public transport from 1861, but Edison's victory in the 1900 competition for an electric tram system made the old depot obsolete and released its land for construction. Bossi covered 170 square meters of the new facade with polychrome ceramic decoration executed by Pio Pinzauti and Ferdinando Brambilla, joined by wrought iron from the Arcari workshop. Continue to Casa Guazzoni, built nearby between 1904 and 1906 for master builder Giacomo Guazzoni, who also executed Bossi's design on another portion of the former tram property. Alessandro Mazzucotelli supplied the wrought iron across balconies and the carriage gate, and Paolo Sala contributed painted decoration inside. An hexagonal stairwell carries cantilevered marble steps beside iron railings, extending the craftsmanship of the exterior into the building. Conclude at Albergo Diurno Venezia, created beneath Piazza Oberdan between 1923 and 1926 as a service center for residents and travelers passing through Porta Venezia. Piero Portaluppi designed an underground complex where public baths shared space with barbers, manicure services and other personal-care facilities. The Diurno closed in 2006 after a long decline, then reopened for public visits through FAI activity in 2014 before the Comune di Milano entrusted the site to FAI in 2015. The progression moves from the disappearance of Milan's horse-tram depot through Bossi, Pinzauti, Brambilla and Mazzucotelli's Liberty residences into Portaluppi's underground service center, tracing three stages in the modernization of the streets surrounding Sequoia Milano.

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