"Favourite Spots in Milan" by Alessandro Bianchi

To discover Milan start first at the hotel where every detail reveals the story of the city and its way of life.
Alessandro Bianchi, the architect who designed the Senato Hotel Milano space, guides us throughout his favourite spots in the city.

Would you like to introduce yourself to Senato Hotel Milano's guests?
I was born in Genoa in 1967, but I've always lived in Milan.
I am an architect and designer with a passion for design and history, always motivated by artistic desire and critical awareness.
Model and context, sustainability and imagination, tradition and innovation are the founding pairs of my work.


What are your inspirations?
The great masters such as Michelangelo and Borromini, Ledoux and Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and the Milanese architects of the '900 and above all cinema, art and nature.


Are there some places that you were pleased to share with Senato Hotel Milan guests?
Sure... If I were an alien (as I often feel...) I would land at the Bicocca Hangar. I would open my eyes in the darkness of the seven heavenly palaces’ by Anselm Kiefer to start my journey in Milan.

So, Let me guide you for 5 spots of my city... some of them are my favorite ones

Let's start with the Garden of Villa Belgiojoso Bonaparte (formerly the Garden of the Villa Comunale, headquarter of the GAM) which is also my daughter's favorite place, the park of one of the most elegant buildings in Milan, an urban villa neoclassical synthesis that touches perfection.

Where is it?
It is a stone's throw from Villa Necchi and the Planetarium, by Piero Portaluppi, one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century in Milan from which I drew the design of the entrance gates of SHM, a quotation from the doors of the building of the Buonarroti-Carpaccio-Giotto company.

Ca 'Granda
Here, the courtyards of Filarete and the great court of Ricchino, the decorative richness of the Lombard Renaissance and the elegance of the Milanese baroque: a mysterious masterpiece. Coming out you cannot miss a glance at the apses of the ancient Saint Nazaro in Brolo and a stop at the "Giardini della Guastalla" for its giant magnolias, in front of the Synagogue.

Braidense Library in Brera
When you come out of the reading rooms you feel more cultured and European than when you entered it even if you didn't open a book.
To visit the "Botanical Garden" where to find two specimens of gingko biloba among the oldest in Europe.
(We have planted the most recent ones in the garden of the Senato hotel Milan, tough).

And then loose yourself in the neighborhood of Via Lincoln
A small multi-colored village with uncoated gardens; an unexpected urban objet trouvé among the tree-lined boulevards of the historic Milanese expansion. By the way, in this neighborhood there are my favorite bakeries!

Take a visit to the ‘Fondazione Prada’
An exhibition organization that tells how architecture can make art "art".
Finally, walking south for a few kilometers you could have lunch in one of the ancient "trattorias" of the Abbey of Chiaravalle and then stroll around the tower, one of the masterpieces of Cistercian architecture; a rural landscape just a few kilometers from the Duomo and Senato Hotel Milan...