Why you should experience Starbucks Milano Durini in Milan, Italy.
Starbucks Milano Durini is a polished neighborhood coffeehouse where San Babila's fashion-led centrality, Via Durini's design culture, Milan's formative influence on Starbucks and the company's localized Italian café model converge a short walk from the Duomo.
Set along Via Durini near Piazza San Babila and just steps from Corso Europa, the coffeehouse occupies a strategic seam between the Quadrilatero della Moda, the commercial streets surrounding the Duomo and a corridor long associated with Milanese furniture and interior-design showrooms. Broad windows keep the street present inside a warm room organized around timber surfaces, brass-toned detailing, upholstered seating and a long working counter, with smaller tables accommodating quick stops near the entrance before deeper seating supports longer coffee breaks away from the pavement. Morning compresses activity around espresso, cappuccino and pastry as commuters cross San Babila, then the pace loosens through midday as shoppers, students and workers settle around laptops and larger drinks; afternoon brings cold coffee and blended preparations into greater prominence as Via Durini's retail traffic builds. Orders continually divide between takeaway and seated service, giving the room several simultaneous rhythms and keeping the counter active even when the tables have settled into slower use. The result is an urban coffeehouse whose layered daily tempo and close relationship with San Babila place the international Starbucks format inside a distinctly Milanese corridor of fashion, commerce and contemporary design.
What you should know about Starbucks Milano Durini.
Starbucks Milano Durini is best known for joining the first wave of conventional Starbucks cafés created for Italy after the Reserve Roastery introduced the company to Milan in September 2018. Percassi had become Starbucks' sole Italian licensee in 2016, giving Antonio Percassi's group responsibility for owning and operating the smaller stores through which the company planned its wider national expansion. Corso Garibaldi introduced that format on November 20, 2018, and Via Durini followed four days later at the corner of Piazza San Babila before Malpensa Terminal 1 completed the opening sequence on November 29. Roberto Masi directed Starbucks Italia during the rollout, which was conceived as a test for an expansion plan reaching fifteen new Italian locations annually if the initial Milan stores established sufficient demand. MDB Architettura worked on both Corso Garibaldi and Via Durini during the 2018 Percassi program, connecting the San Babila café with the architectural practice subsequently responsible for numerous Starbucks projects across Italy. Coffee for the first conventional Milan stores came from the Reserve Roastery at Cordusio, linking neighborhood service directly with Starbucks' new Milanese roasting operation. The company replaced its customary Mastrena equipment in Italy with Victoria Arduino's semi-automatic Black Eagle, keeping the barista actively involved in espresso preparation. Ceramic cups, saucers and teaspoons accompanied espresso, another adaptation devised specifically around Italian coffee habits. Frappuccino entered the Italian network through these conventional stores after being omitted from the Cordusio Roastery, with a Tiramisù version created specifically for the national launch. Nitro Cold Brew and Clover Brewed Coffee widened the original drinks program through cold extraction and vacuum-press brewing. Percassi also commissioned the Maringoni family's Ol Pastissèr laboratory in Clusone to create a dedicated pastry line, placing Nicole Maringoni's brioches, fruit cakes, sweet finger foods, bread and focaccia alongside the American drinks repertoire. Via Durini acquired a fresh creative chapter during Milan Design Week 2026 when Starbucks Italia, SLIDE, Krillmat and Favaretto & Partners transformed spent coffee grounds into REKRILL furnishings and objects displayed inside the store, connecting an address opened during Starbucks' first Milanese expansion with the contemporary design culture of the street around it.
Espresso provides the shortest route through the current drinks program, concentrating Blonde Espresso Roast before milk gradually changes its weight through macchiato, cappuccino and caffè latte. Marocchino adds mocha sauce, milk cream and cocoa powder, introducing chocolate without abandoning the compact proportions associated with an Italian coffee break. Caramel Macchiato expands the combination through vanilla syrup, steamed milk, espresso and caramel before Caffè Mocha moves deeper into cocoa and whipped cream. Cold Brew changes the extraction process itself, developing coffee without heat and producing a smoother chilled foundation that leads naturally toward Nitro Cold Brew, where nitrogen changes the body into a finer, creamier texture. Shakerato returns to espresso through ice and sugar syrup, using vigorous shaking to chill and aerate the coffee before oat-based shaken versions extend the technique with brown sugar and plant-based milk. Frappuccino pushes temperature and texture furthest through blending, beginning with Espresso before Caramel and Java Chip add whipped cream, caramel, chocolate sauce and chocolate pieces. Starbucks Milano Durini moves coffee through concentration, steamed milk, cocoa, cold extraction, nitrogen, shaking and blending, giving a single café format several radically different expressions of the roasted bean.
How to fold Starbucks Milano Durini into your trip.
Starbucks Milano Durini works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing Milanese Liberty craftsmanship, interwar sculptural experimentation and Piero Portaluppi's architecture for the city's industrial bourgeoisie around San Babila and the Quadrilatero del Silenzio.
Begin at Casa Campanini, which architect Alfredo Campanini designed for himself between 1904 and 1906 after Giuseppe Sommaruga's Palazzo Castiglioni demonstrated the possibilities of Milanese Liberty nearby. Michele Vedani sculpted the two immense female figures framing the entrance as allegories of Painting and Sculpture, and Alessandro Mazzucotelli executed Campanini's plant-like wrought iron across gates and balconies, joining architecture, sculpture, glass and metalwork in a remarkably complete residential commission. Continue to Palazzo Sola Busca, where Aldo Andreani developed an interwar residence on Via Serbelloni whose most famous intervention sits beside the entrance: Adolfo Wildt's bronze ear, created as the mouthpiece of an early intercom connecting callers outside with the porter inside. The sculptural device turned a piece of domestic technology into one of the neighborhood's most unusual artistic details and gave the building its Milanese nickname, Ca' de l'Oreggia. Conclude at Villa Necchi Campiglio, designed by Piero Portaluppi between 1932 and 1935 for sisters Nedda and Gigina Necchi and Gigina's husband Angelo Campiglio, members of a wealthy Lombard industrial family. Tomaso Buzzi subsequently reworked portions of the interiors after World War II, the property passed to FAI in 2001 and restoration preceded its public opening in 2008, preserving Portaluppi's architecture alongside the Claudia Gian Ferrari and Alighiero and Emilietta de' Micheli art collections. The progression moves from Campanini, Vedani and Mazzucotelli's Liberty synthesis through Andreani and Wildt's fusion of sculpture with domestic technology into Portaluppi, Buzzi and the Necchi Campiglio family's interwar residence, tracing three successive experiments in Milanese architecture within walking distance of Starbucks Milano Durini.
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