Why you should experience Terrazza Gallia in Milan, Italy.
Terrazza Gallia is a sophisticated rooftop restaurant where Centrale's grand railway architecture, twentieth-century hospitality, contemporary Italian design and north-south culinary traditions converge above Piazza Duca d'Aosta.
Set within Excelsior Hotel Gallia along Piazza Duca d'Aosta near Via Fabio Filzi and just steps from Milano Centrale, the restaurant crowns the hotel's seventh floor opposite Ulisse Stacchini's vast railway terminus and within sight of Gio Ponti's Pirelli Tower. Studio Marco Piva conceived the restaurant as part of the hotel's major reinvention, shaping the dining room around black marble, bronze tones and Italian furnishings before opening the interior onto one of Milan's largest hotel terraces. Executive Chef Vincenzo Lebano and Chef de Cuisine Andrea Calia di Dio connect that elevated setting with Italian cooking that moves between Lombard traditions, Mediterranean flavors and the culinary imprint of the Cerea family behind Da Vittorio. The result is a restaurant where Marco Piva's rooftop architecture, the Lebano and Cerea culinary lineage and direct views across Milano Centrale place contemporary Italian dining inside one of Milan's great twentieth-century urban compositions.
What you should know about Terrazza Gallia.
Terrazza Gallia is best known for the culinary partnership that brought Naples-born brothers Vincenzo and Antonio Lebano together with Chicco and Bobo Cerea of three-MICHELIN-starred Da Vittorio when the renewed Excelsior Hotel Gallia introduced its rooftop restaurant in 2015. Both Lebano brothers studied hospitality before developing their careers in acclaimed Italian kitchens, with Antonio working at La Parolina, Antonino Cannavacciuolo's Villa Crespi and Da Vittorio, where his year with the Cerea family became the decisive connection. The Cereas selected Antonio and Vincenzo to lead their Milanese project, and the brothers moved to Milan in May 2015, commuting to Brusaporto as they prepared the kitchen before Terrazza Gallia began service that September. Early dishes included veal fricassee and a ricotta-and-spinach raviolone with marinated egg yolk and black truffle, giving the young chefs a classical foundation as they learned Milan's producers and gradually introduced stronger Mediterranean references from their Campanian upbringing. Chicco and Bobo Cerea progressively granted the brothers greater autonomy, shifting their role toward consultation on seasonal changes as the Lebanos developed a cooking style joining their southern roots with ingredients and traditions encountered in Lombardy. That evolution brought institutional recognition in 2019, when Antonio and Vincenzo received Identità Golose's award for service and hospitality, followed by two Gambero Rosso forks and three L'Espresso hats in the early 2020s. Head sommelier Paolo Porfidio added another chapter in 2023 when Identità Golose named him Best Sommelier, recognizing a University of Milan enology graduate whose wine program spans every Italian region, France and major international growing areas with particular attention to Champagne and small producers. Antonio departed in 2025 after a decade at the restaurant, leaving Vincenzo as Executive Chef and moving the original four-brother partnership into a new phase with Andrea Calia di Dio as Chef de Cuisine, Francesco Gramuglia overseeing pastry, Porfidio directing wine and Giuseppe Lepore leading the dining room. A project initially entrusted by one celebrated pair of brothers to another consequently matured into a decade-long exchange between Campania and Lombardy before Vincenzo Lebano assumed sole executive leadership of the restaurant's next generation.
Plin filled with braised ossobuco compresses Milanese tradition into pasta, pairing saffron and bone marrow with Parmesan popcorn for alternating richness, fragrance and crispness. Pizzaiola risotto turns toward Vincenzo Lebano's southern inheritance through tomato and oregano, transferring the familiar flavors of Campanian pizza into the texture of a northern rice preparation. Linguine with sweet pepper, clams and seafood emulsion carries that movement toward the coast, setting shellfish salinity against the sweetness of pepper and the concentrated marine character of the sauce. Turbot meunière changes the structure through browned butter technique, sucrine and caviar, allowing delicate fish, fat, bitterness and salinity to develop across a restrained composition. Paccheri alla Vittorio brings the Cerea connection directly onto the table through the Da Vittorio classic of large pasta tubes, tomato, basil and Parmesan, preserving the dish that has become inseparable from the Brusaporto restaurant. Cotoletta alla Milanese completes the savory movement at the opposite geographical pole, returning the menu to Milan through breaded veal. Panettone esotico contemporaneo closes with Marsala cream, passion fruit gelée, panettone gelato, semi-candied apricot, zabaglione and panettone crumbs, dismantling the Milanese Christmas cake across cream, frozen elements, fruit and pastry. Terrazza Gallia develops its culinary character through these crossings between Milan, Naples and the Cerea tradition, allowing ossobuco, pizzaiola flavors, Mediterranean seafood, Paccheri alla Vittorio and panettone to trace the geographical relationships behind the kitchen.
How to fold Terrazza Gallia into your trip.
Terrazza Gallia works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing railway ambition, postwar engineering and twentieth-century memory through the architecture surrounding Milano Centrale.
Begin at Milano Centrale, where Ulisse Stacchini won the 1912 design competition for a new terminus after an earlier scheme had stalled, then repeatedly revised his project before the station opened in 1931. The completed complex stretches 200 meters across its principal facade, with winged horses above the entrance, the Galleria delle Carrozze behind it and great train sheds whose largest arch spans 72 meters, translating three decades of changing architectural ambition into Milan's principal railway gateway. Continue to Pirelli Tower, commissioned after Alberto and Piero Pirelli chose a new administrative headquarters near the site of the company's first factory and entrusted its development to Gio Ponti with Giuseppe Valtolina, Egidio Dell'Orto, Pier Luigi Nervi and Arturo Danusso. The 127-meter reinforced-concrete tower opened in 1960 with 31 floors, a narrow plan tapering toward its ends and 9,500 square meters of aluminum-and-glass curtain wall, demonstrating how engineering and corporate patronage redirected Milanese architecture upward after World War II. Conclude at Memoriale della Shoah di Milano beneath the railway tracks, where the station's former postal handling area became a departure point for Jews and political opponents deported between 1943 and 1945. The first convoy carrying Jewish prisoners left on December 6, 1943 with 169 people, only five of whom returned, followed on January 30, 1944 by another transport toward Auschwitz-Birkenau; Liliana Segre was among the deportees forced through this concealed railway system. The progression moves from Stacchini's immense railway project through Ponti and Nervi's postwar vertical experiment into the concealed deportation platform beneath the station, revealing how architecture surrounding Terrazza Gallia carries Milan's ambitions and darkest twentieth-century history within the same few blocks.
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