Beyond its grand façades and grey beauty, Milan has a quieter, greener side, from revived villas to long-hidden courtyards to hotel winter gardens open to the whole city. As the city lights up this week for Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone — which together form Milan Design Week — these spaces offer pockets of serenity amid the relentless pace. While popular parks like Sempione or Boscoincittà fill up with picnicking, sun-seeking crowds, our picks offer more secluded environments for a bit of greenery-backdropped relaxation.
Villa Necchi Campiglio
In an elegant, tranquil corner of central Milan, Villa Necchi Campiglio is an architectural jewel nestled within an enchanted garden. Designed in the early 1930s by Piero Portaluppi for the Necchi Campiglio family and now maintained by FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano, or the Italian National Trust), the villa fuses Italian Rationalism with Art Deco glamour, its linear volumes and marble-trimmed façade opening onto greenery at every turn. In the garden, magnolia and wisteria frame winding paths, where seasonal blooms spill across the lawns, perfuming the air as the sounds of water and birdsong make you feel like you’re in the countryside. A glass veranda overlooks the lawn, while a tennis court and Milan’s first private swimming pool, along with a discreet bistro, introduce a refined, almost resort-like calm. Today, the villa is open to all and regularly animated by events.
Via Mozart 14, Milan / Website
LùBar
At the heart of Milan’s Villa Reale, LùBar is a Sicilian oasis where Mediterranean flavors and fragrances unfold in spaces imbued with light, greenery and charm. Named for the siblings behind the space — Lucilla, Lucrezia and Ludovico Bonaccorsi — the café-restaurant echoes of its Sicilian heritage, and has an atmosphere reminiscent of a winter garden. Green spaces define the experience: the Limonaia is flooded with daylight through large windows overlooking the gardens and the Modern Art Gallery courtyard; the Serra, a climate-controlled greenhouse, is enveloped by climbing plants beneath a mirrored ceiling; the Banco counter is a meeting point right at the center of the action; while the Cortile and Giardino extend the experience outdoors, shaded and intimate, offering views of the Royal Villa’s park.
Via Palestro 16, Milan / Website
The Carlton
Opened in 2025, The Carlton is Rocco Forte Hotels’ tenth Italian address, and its ivy-draped Carlton Garden is a centerpiece. Designed by architects Philip Vergeylen and Paolo Moschino under the creative direction of Olga Polizzi, the hotel blends Art Deco accents with bold palettes and a sensibility rooted in Milanese heritage. Greenery plays a defining role throughout the property: a dramatic, vertical greenhouse-like entrance is framed by ancient lion statues, and the ivy-draped Carlton Garden was conceived for privacy and calm. At its heart is Café Floretta, a luminous winter garden beneath a domed glass roof. Here, stabilized botanicals, verdant interiors and shifting natural light create a sanctuary in the heart of the city (the entrance is on Via della Spiga, part of the world-famous Quadrilatero della Moda).
Via Senato 5, Milan / Website
Portrait Milano
Behind the imposing 17th-century Baroque portal on Corso Venezia 11, Portrait Milano has quietly reopened a green space that had previously been hidden from the city for decades. Reborn in 2022 by Lungarno Collection (the hospitality group of the Ferragamo family) after a sensitive restoration by architect Michele De Lucchi and his studio AMDL CIRCLE, the former Archiepiscopal Seminary has been transformed into a hotel and living piazza. Greenery softens the monumentality of stone and shadow; here, the trees, shrubs, seasonal flowers and herbs invite you to pause. 10_11 Bar, Restaurant and Garden designed by Michele Bönan anchors the piazza with understated elegance. The interiors flow seamlessly outdoors into the garden, which is embellished by the restoration of existing architectural elements. Beneath colonnades and shifting light, enjoy a coffee or cocktail.
Corso Venezia 11, Milan / Website
Bvlgari Hotel Milano
Set along a private street in downtown Milan, the Bvlgari Hotel Milano occupies a restored 18th-century palazzo that conceals one of the city’s most extraordinary green retreats: a 4,000-square-meter private garden, a natural extension of the nearby Brera Botanical Garden, whose origins are recorded as early as 1305 in Piero de Crescenza’s Ruralium Commodorum. Designed by landscape architect Sophie Agata Ambroise, the garden unfolds as a sequence of open-air rooms, shaped by trees, hedges and subtle changes in elevation. Hidden behind a tall screen of red beech, Il Gazebo offers a secluded setting for open-air dining, while I Vimini, framed by laurel trees, and Le Isole di Ghiaia — shaded by plane trees entwined with white wisteria — feel almost theatrical.
Via Privata Fratelli Gabba 7B, Milan / Website
