Palazzo Cordusio Gran Meliá

Piazza Cordusio is as central as Milan gets: the Duomo one way, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II a few steps beyond it, La Scala just past that. Palazzo Cordusio takes a grand old building on the square and puts something much quieter inside it.

The rooms are contemporary and edited, a quiet counter-argument to the building that holds them, which after a day of Milanese façades comes as a relief. There is a spa with an indoor pool, low-lit and enclosed, and a roof with the city’s skyline laid out along it. Milan rewards walking and punishes it in equal measure, and this address answers both halves inside the same building.

The centre, precisely

The hotel occupies Palazzo Venezia on the square itself, which puts the cathedral, the arcade and the opera house inside the same short walk, along with the streets that actually reward wandering. Milan gives itself up slowly, and mostly to people who look at the ground floors as well as the monuments. This address makes that possible without any planning: everything is near, and the hotel is easy to return to at any hour.

Edited, not decorated

Guest rooms favour warm timber, pale fabrics and furniture chosen for its shape, with one accent colour doing the work of a dozen ornaments. The mood is contemporary and composed, a deliberate answer to the formality of the building around it. Large windows and careful lighting make the rooms usable in daylight and not merely occupied at night. The suites add the separate living space that turns a short visit into a temporary Milanese address.

The spa and the roof

Two rooms make the difference here. The spa, with its indoor pool and water feature, is enclosed and dimly lit, which is exactly what a day of marble and traffic requires. The roof does the opposite, opening onto the tiles, terraces and towers of central Milan, and it is the better place to be at seven in the evening. Between them they cover the two halves of a Milanese day.