PORTRAIT MILANO

A new outpost of Leonardo Ferragamo's Portrait hotel brand reimagines one of Milan's historic buildings.

- Stephanie Rafanelli

A grubby morning moon lingers over the baroque colonnades of Milan's new Piazza del Quadrilatero like the ghost of the city's old image. The sky is a crisp blue, swept clean of the dull cloud of business that once hung over the forward-looking Italian design capital. Pale beech leaves create fairy lights over Liberty-style Napoleonic and rationalist palazzos by the Luigi Rovati Foundation, one of the new museums contributing to Milan's postBrexit emergence as one of Europe's most well-connected culture and lifestyle hubs. After the clean-up initiatives of 2015's World Expo, a new sustainable metro now speeds in minutes from Linate Airport to the central Quadrilatero della Moda, the shopping district that covers more than a square mile.

"After decades of self-improvement, Milan has gone from a city known for business to an important global reference for quality of living," says Leonardo Ferragamo, the Florentine responsible for the new piazza, who is the founder of the boutique Lungarno Collection of hotels, as well as the chairman of his late father Salvatore's eponymous fashion house. His ambitious restoration of an archiepiscopal seminary is the third installment of his Portrait brand, admired for its impeccable Italian heritage, leather smooth Tuscan craftsmanship, and locations just an elegant stride from Italy's high-fashion promenades. The collection, founded in 1995, also has a monopoly of curated four-and five-star hotels along Florence's Arno, an extension of the Salvatore Ferragamo headquarters where Ferragamo's father hosted his Hollywood clientele.