Why you should experience The Manhattan in Milan, Italy.
The Manhattan is a worldly cocktail bar where Porta Volta's after-dark culture, Danny and Kevin Selby's family stewardship, Luca Perego's bartending and a spirits collection spanning hundreds of bottles converge through a New York-inflected approach to drinking.
Set along Via Alessandro Volta near Corso Garibaldi and just steps from Monumento a Giovanni Battista Piatti, nineteenth-century blocks gather around Largo La Foppa near the axis opened through Milan's former Spanish fortifications toward the Cimitero Monumentale. Street-art references and New York imagery establish the room's visual character, supported by a bottle display whose scale makes spirits immediately legible as the principal attraction. The evening moves easily between beer and aperitivo before deeper exploration of gin, vermouth, whisky and Latin American distillates takes over at the counter. The result is a cosmopolitan Porta Volta bar whose range feels purposeful: New York supplies the visual premise, but serious bottle selection and bartender-led experimentation give the address its substance.
What you should know about The Manhattan.
The Manhattan is best known for the Selby family's stewardship and an unusually deep spirits program developed around gin, vermouth and Latin American distillates. Danny Selby owned the bar with his father Kevin by 2017, with Luca Perego working alongside Danny on its cocktail program. By that year, the back bar held 350 labels. Around 100 were gins, 50 came from a South American selection encompassing tequila, mezcal and pisco, and more than 20 were vermouths. Beer received its own house treatment: five draft beers were produced by a small brewery in the Lower Como area using recipes developed for The Manhattan, with names including Tribeca for the Triple and Staten Island for the Stout. Danny Selby and Perego worked directly with Distillerie Marzadro in November 2017 to move grappa into aperitivo mixing. They created Trentiki with La Trentina Morbida, Goslings rum, Grand Marnier, orgeat, lime and sugar, then paired La Trentina Tradizionale with St-Germain, lemon, sugar and Amargo Chuncho in It's Just Sour Grapes, My Dear. Marzadro returned to Via Volta that December for Affina & Dolcezze, pairing three Affina reserve grappas with small pastries by chef Giuseppe Rai. The Manhattan remains active at the same address in 2026, extending a drinking project with roots reaching well beyond the current season.
Gin provides the broadest route through the bottle collection, moving among botanical profiles before tonic, garnish and dilution shape the finished serve. Vermouth creates a second line of exploration through more than twenty labels, giving bitter, herbal and fortified-wine profiles room beside the dominant gin selection. Tequila, mezcal and pisco shift attention toward Latin American distillates, with whisky and other malts widening the darker-spirit branch. House beer offers a different concept entirely: five recipes were commissioned specifically for the bar and named after New York boroughs and neighborhoods. Seasonal cocktails have also incorporated house syrups, bitters and fresh fruit juices, preserving experimentation beyond the permanent bottle selection. The range makes counter conversation especially valuable, since the strongest route through The Manhattan lies in moving among spirit families instead of approaching the evening through a single signature drink.
How to fold The Manhattan into your trip.
The Manhattan works as the cocktail stop within a Porta Volta route connecting a century-old artists' residence, Herzog & de Meuron's twenty-first-century cultural architecture and Luigi Canonica's Napoleonic amphitheatre beside Parco Sempione.
Begin at Casa degli Artisti, created in 1909 through the patronage of the Bogani brothers to provide studios and workshops for artists. Its 1910-1911 building became an early Milanese experiment in reinforced concrete and iron, with large studio windows and a projecting iron-and-glass section illuminating the internal corridors. Luciano Fabro, Hidetoshi Nagasawa and art historian Jole De Sanna led another important period during the late 1970s, developing exhibitions for younger artists and relationships with independent cultural spaces. Continue to Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, whose Herzog & de Meuron headquarters opened in 2016 as part of the architects' Porta Volta masterplan. The long, narrow building follows the former Spanish-wall alignment and draws its elongated form partly from Lombard rural buildings; 2,700 square meters across five floors place a bookstore, performance hall, offices, seminar rooms and reading room above the foundation's archive. Conclude at Arena Civica Gianni Brera, commissioned during the Napoleonic remaking of the Castello district and designed by Luigi Canonica with Rome's Circus Maximus as a reference. Work began in 1806, and Napoleon attended its August 1807 inauguration. The amphitheatre entered municipal ownership in 1870, later shifted toward sporting events and received Gianni Brera's name in 2002. The progression moves from the Bogani brothers' studios and Fabro and Nagasawa's later artistic chapter through Herzog & de Meuron's intervention along the former Spanish walls into Canonica's Napoleonic arena, framing an evening at The Manhattan through three distinct periods of northern Milanese cultural life.
Where your story begins.
Foresyte Travel reveals places that feel extraordinary long before you arrive.
Experience premium editorial crafted for luxury travelers.
