Why you should experience Venchi Gelato and Chocolate in Milan, Italy.
Venchi Gelato and Chocolate is a Piedmontese chocogelateria where Porta Nuova's elevated Piazza Gae Aulenti, the glass-and-steel UniCredit complex, Silviano Venchi's nineteenth-century chocolate heritage and the company's modern fusion of confectionery with fresh gelato converge at the base of Torre UniCredit B.
Set within Piazza Gae Aulenti near Corso Como and just above the pedestrian routes descending toward Porta Garibaldi, the shop occupies the center of Porta Nuova's circular raised plaza, surrounded by fountains, curved retail frontages and César Pelli's ascending towers. Its glass frontage places the chocolate and gelato counter directly against the movement of the square, turning a compact retail interior into an easy extension of the surrounding pedestrian circuit. Pralines, gianduiotti, cremini and chocolate bars sit beside freshly prepared gelato and hot chocolate, allowing a brief stop to range from Piedmontese hazelnut confectionery to colder cream-based preparations. The result is a distinctly Porta Nuova Venchi location where a Turin chocolate house founded in 1878 meets one of contemporary Milan's most architecturally recognizable public spaces.
What you should know about Venchi Gelato and Chocolate.
Venchi Gelato and Chocolate is best known for bringing a chocolate company founded by twenty-year-old Silviano Venchi in Turin in 1878 into the contemporary chocogelateria format represented at Piazza Gae Aulenti. Silviano invested his savings in two bronze cauldrons and began experimenting first at home and then in a small Via degli Artisti workshop in Vanchiglia, establishing the enterprise that became Silvano Venchi & C. Expansion moved the business into larger Vanchiglia premises in 1898, and conversion into a joint-stock company in 1905 accompanied plans for a Corso Regina Margherita factory exceeding 12,000 square meters and employing 500 workers across twelve production departments. Venchi also became a supplier to the Royal Household, placing the young confectioner within Turin's established Piedmontese chocolate culture. The company merged with Società Anonima Unica in 1934 to form Venchi Unica, joining two major strands of Turin confectionery manufacturing under a single enterprise. Three entrepreneurs revived Venchi in 1998 after a difficult later period and established a new factory in Cuneo, beginning the modern expansion that eventually joined fresh Italian gelato with chocolate inside the company's stores. The Piazza Gae Aulenti branch now operates inside Torre UniCredit B, placing that revived retail model directly within the Pelli Clarke Pelli complex at the center of Porta Nuova. Venchi reinforced its connection with the square in October 2025 through a dedicated Chocoviar installation, an eight-flavor temporary project whose new Lampone and Gianduia creations joined six established Chocoviar variants in a three-room presentation.
Chocolate changes form repeatedly across the counter, beginning with gianduiotti and cremini before moving through filled pralines, spreads, bars and freshly prepared gelato. Chocoviar introduces one of the company's most elaborate constructions through small chocolate granules surrounding filled centers, with the 2025 Gianduia version placing a whole PGI Piedmont hazelnut inside Gianduia Antica Ricetta, a dark shell and 75-percent dark-chocolate granules. Lampone takes a different route through almond-and-raspberry cream, liquid raspberry coulis, a double dark-and-milk-chocolate shell and the same dark granule finish. Gelato shifts the tasting toward temperature and creaminess, with chocolate, hazelnut, pistachio and fruit preparations translating ingredients familiar from the confectionery assortment into freshly churned form. The chocogelateria concept extends those contrasts through gelatoshakes and hot chocolate, moving the same house repertoire between solid, frozen, blended and liquid preparations. Venchi develops the experience through repeated changes in texture and temperature, allowing Piedmontese hazelnut traditions and contemporary filled chocolates to occupy the same tasting sequence.
How to fold Venchi Gelato and Chocolate into your trip.
Venchi Gelato and Chocolate works as the sweet stop within a Porta Nuova route connecting César Pelli's vertical centerpiece, Petra Blaisse's geometric urban park and a nineteenth-century railway warehouse subsequently converted into the headquarters of Fondazione Riccardo Catella.
Begin at UniCredit Tower, where César Pelli and Pelli Clarke Pelli organized three glass-and-steel towers around Piazza Gae Aulenti as the architectural centerpiece of the wider Porta Nuova development. Tower A rises 31 floors and reaches 230 meters with its 78-meter spiral spire, whose curved sections were engineered against wind, snow and atmospheric loads; the adjoining towers step down to 100 and 50 meters, producing the graduated composition surrounding the plaza. Continue to BAM - Biblioteca degli Alberi, designed by Petra Blaisse and Inside Outside as a contemporary public park structured through intersecting paths, planted fields and circular forests. The project converts botanical organization into urban geometry, using distinct tree species and vegetation rooms to connect Piazza Gae Aulenti with Isola and the surrounding towers across a broad pedestrian landscape. Conclude at Fondazione Riccardo Catella, housed inside a late-nineteenth-century railway warehouse whose successive uses followed Milan's changing relationship with the former rail district. The building became a film set and later a contemporary-art laboratory during the twentieth century before a 2006 restoration preserved its historic Art Nouveau structure and converted it for the foundation created by the Catella family in 2005 in memory of Riccardo Catella. The progression moves from Pelli's skyscraper engineering through Blaisse's botanical geometry into the preserved railway architecture of Fondazione Riccardo Catella, tracing the architectural, landscape and industrial layers that define Porta Nuova around Venchi Gelato and Chocolate.
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