The courtyard of the Portrait hotel—which occupies a structure that was once home to the world’s second-oldest seminary—was restored by the Milanese architect Michele De Lucchi to its original splendor.

Portrait Mode

Milan’s best new hotel, Portrait, comes courtesy of the Ferragamo family and brings equal doses of history, tradition, glamour, and edge

By Elena Clavarino

Great hotels in Milan are hard to come by. There are the sleek, edgy places, such as the Armani or the Bulgari, on one end, and the slightly stuffy, traditional five-star institutions, like the Principe di Savoia and the Four Seasons, on the other. Finding something that’s both modern and sophisticated isn’t easy.

Enter Portrait, a new hotel by the Lungarno Collection, the Ferragamo family’s hospitality group. The building sits around a 30,000-square-foot 17th-century courtyard in the Quadrilatero neighborhood, where the city’s ladies flock to buy the latest in high fashion. Yet, despite its central location, the city’s residents have never paid it much attention. “Nobody from Milan knows about this building,” Leonardo Ferragamo has said.