Facing Milan's Piazza Duca d'Aosta since 1932, the creamy Liberty-style palazzo that houses the Excelsior Hotel Gallia is one of the city's great architectural survivors — its mansard roof, pedimented dormers, and figurative stone caryatids intact across nearly a century of Milanese change. The restoration completed in 2015 by Milanese practice Lissoni Associati, working alongside architect Marco Fantoni, addressed all 235 rooms and suites across nine floors while preserving the facade's elaborately carved limestone surface, visible in these images as a precisely articulated sequence of pilasters, balustrades, and carved keystones that makes most contemporary hotel architecture look impoverished by comparison. Inside, Lissoni's approach sets the historical envelope against a contemporary interior language with considerable assurance. Guest rooms pair wide-plank oak flooring and dark wenge wall panelling with elliptical backlit mirror headboards that carry an Art Deco reference without reproducing the period — the effect closer to a rigorous reinterpretation than a pastiche. The Gallia restaurant pushes further, its lacquered black ceiling, gold grid framework, oversized opalescent pendant lamps, and amber leather tub chairs constructing something between a 1930s ocean liner dining room and a contemporary Milanese design object. The spa takes a quieter register: polished grey marble surrounds the indoor pool, faced by an iridescent mosaic feature wall, hexagonal mirrored ceiling panels drawing natural light deep into the volume.

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Excelsior Hotel Gallia reflects the glittering essence of Milan's sophistication. Originally opened in 1932, the hotel has been completely renovated by renowned Milanese designer Marco Piva. An architectural jewel of belle epoque grandeur, Piva has created an extraordinary new destination in the city of style.