Why you should experience Starhotels Ritz in Milan, Italy.
Starhotels Ritz is a cosmopolitan design hotel where Porta Venezia's Liberty architecture, mercantile energy, Milanese creative culture and international hospitality converge behind Corso Buenos Aires.
Set along Via Lazzaro Spallanzani near Via Lazzaretto and just steps from Corso Buenos Aires, the hotel occupies the former Lazzaretto district between Giovanni Battista Bossi's Liberty houses, Rodolfo Vantini's Neoclassical Porta Venezia tollhouses and the commercial avenue that emerged as northeastern Milan expanded beyond the Spanish walls. Red and black interiors unfold through leather, velvet, teak and wenge, with large-scale photographs of Milan carrying the surrounding city into guestrooms shaped by the hotel's extensive 2008 redesign. Private terraces and an eighth-floor wellness retreat add quieter settings above the dense streets, creating a marked transition from Corso Buenos Aires into a more secluded interior world. The result is a hotel whose bold interiors and elevated retreat connect contemporary Italian hospitality with one of Milan's richest concentrations of Liberty architecture and metropolitan history.
What you should know about Starhotels Ritz.
Starhotels Ritz is best known for the comprehensive 2008 redesign of all 197 rooms and public areas by architect and interior designer Andrea Auletta. Auletta developed the property through crisp contemporary forms, theatrical illumination and a recurring red-and-black palette, with teak, wenge, leather and velvet extending the visual program through the guestrooms. Backlit enlargements of Milan cityscapes appeared above the beds, embedding the city directly into rooms that were also refitted with Starhotels' proprietary Starbed concept. The renovation reached the bar and restaurant through black parquet, rosewood furniture, geometric wall lights with copper detailing and broad red leather seating. Italforte subsequently completed another intervention across 122 rooms and the hall, living room and conference center while the hotel remained operational, adding a later construction phase to Auletta's original overhaul. Starhotels has since renovated the full 197-room inventory again, preserving the property as one of the group's principal Milan addresses near Porta Venezia. Auletta's authorship, the complete 2008 reconstruction and later room campaigns give Ritz a sustained design history built through successive interventions across nearly two decades.
The Dr. Hauschka Private Spa Suite introduces another authored layer through treatments derived from methods Elisabeth Sigmund developed in Stockholm during the 1950s. Sigmund combined her scientific and cosmetic work with manual lymphatic drainage techniques learned from Emil and Estrid Vodder, forming the basis for the lymphatic stimulation method later associated with Dr. Hauschka treatments. The hotel places that program on its eighth floor alongside a Finnish sauna, Turkish bath, relaxation area, solarium and private terrace overlooking Milan. Bruschetteria Grill & BBQ shifts the experience toward regional food through Fassone Piemontese beef, risotto alla milanese, ossobuco and mondeghili, supported by wines emphasizing Lombardy and the Vino Libero network. Its adjoining bar draws from Italian liqueur traditions through bitters and Rabarbaro, including the Old Passion cocktail, before service extends into a planted outdoor garden. The Sigmund treatment lineage, regional kitchen, Italian spirits and elevated terrace give Ritz several distinct expressions of place beyond the visual impact established by its redesigned rooms.
How to fold Starhotels Ritz into your trip.
Starhotels Ritz works as the anchor for a day tracing Porta Venezia from the disappearance of Milan's horse-drawn transport infrastructure through the flowering of Liberty architecture into Piero Portaluppi's underground experiment in metropolitan service.
Begin at Casa Galimberti, designed by Giovanni Battista Bossi between 1903 and 1905 for the Galimberti brothers on land formerly occupied by the Società Anonima degli Omnibus, which had operated Milan's horse-drawn public transport and the Milan-Monza tramway. Bossi covered more than 170 square meters of its facades with polychrome ceramic tiles designed by him and executed by Pio Pinzauti and Ferdinando Brambilla, joining those figurative surfaces with wrought iron, floral cement decoration, central heating and an elevator. Continue to Casa Guazzoni, where Bossi worked between 1904 and 1906 for builder Giacomo Guazzoni on another portion of the former omnibus depot after Milan's transition toward electric tram service released the site for development. Alessandro Mazzucotelli contributed elaborate wrought iron to balconies and the carriage gate, and the interior preserves an unusual hexagonal staircase alongside paintings attributed to Paolo Sala that resurfaced during restoration in 1997. Conclude at Albergo Diurno Venezia, the subterranean public service center created beneath Piazza Oberdan between 1923 and 1926 with Piero Portaluppi among its principal architectural authors. The complex combined public baths with showers, changing rooms, manicure, pedicure, hairdressing and barber services before closing in 2006 and entering a preservation program involving FAI, the University of Milan, Politecnico di Milano and Fondazione Piero Portaluppi. The progression moves from the horse-tram land beneath Bossi's ceramic Casa Galimberti through Guazzoni and Mazzucotelli's richly worked Liberty residence into Portaluppi's subterranean center for a modernizing metropolis, revealing how transport, architecture and personal service successively reshaped the streets surrounding Starhotels Ritz.
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