The Best Places to Drink Near Buscone, by the Record

1. 50 Best #43 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #22 · Europe's 50 Best Bars
3. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

The Campari family opened this cocktail bar under the glass vaults of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele back when standing at a counter with a drink in hand was a novelty worth naming, and the house bitters were the whole point. It holds a spot on Europe's 50 Best Bars, and the negronis arrive in surroundings that make every other bar feel like it needs to try harder. Dress accordingly.

1. 50 Best #18 · Europe's 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. 50 Best #49 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

The toilet is famously larger than the bar, which seats four people at a counter and leaves no room for ambiguity about what kind of night you're having. Backdoor 43 is a reservation-only cocktail bar tucked behind another bar on the Navigli, and the bartender on duty is working exclusively for you. Guests pick the music, the pace, and apparently the vibe. Very small, very Milan.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The name comes from the horticultural term for a cutting, a piece of a plant relocated to take root somewhere new, which tells you something about the ambitions here. Talea is an experimental cocktail bar tucked into a slightly unexpected corner of the Navigli area, with a room that feels deliberately intimate. The drinks lean on kitchen technique as much as bar technique, so what arrives in the glass tends to surprise before it satisfies.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The sign is easy to miss, which seems to be part of the point. This cocktail bar in Porta Romana pulls you into a low-lit room of velvet sofas, extravagant mirrors, and sparkling lights that make it feel like the '80s never quite ended. The kind of place where you stop checking your phone without deciding to. A neighborhood worth wandering for its trattorias anyway, so the detour is painless.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A 15-meter bar counter lined with bamboo shelves stacked floor-to-ceiling with rum pretty much tells you everything. Rita's Tiki Room is a cocktail bar on Milan's canalside strip, serving Tiki classics and house originals alongside Polynesian snacks with a Cantonese edge. The same team behind Rita around the corner runs this one, and the vibe is full commitment: proper accoutrements, no ironic winking at the theme.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Surfboards and antique furniture share wall space at this cocktail bar on the far edge of Milan, and somehow the combination works. The room feels less like a city bar and more like a countryside detour, all mismatched art and skating decks, with a plant enthusiast behind the counter shaking what Italians have always called "misture." Five kilometers from the center, which is exactly far enough to feel like you've escaped something.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide