The Top 20 Places to Drink Near Octavius Bar

A former textile warehouse in the semi-central city holds a Michelin-starred cocktail bar and restaurant that Europe's 50 Best Bars ranks seventh in the world. The ground floor runs as a bistrot and cocktail bar, while twelve seats upstairs, half of them at the kitchen counter, host an experimental tasting menu that travels from Romagna to Spain without quite settling anywhere. The chef stops by every table, which at twelve covers is less a gesture than a genuine conversation.

1. 50 Best #7 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #6 · Europe's 50 Best Bars
3. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Perched above a Replay store in Milan's gleaming Piazza Gae Aulenti, the Octavius Bar arrives as a nautical surprise, with boat-like design details in a neighbourhood that reads more glass tower than harbour. The cocktail bar draws the after-work crowd that lives in this part of the city, the kind of people who take their aperitivo seriously. Gae Aulenti is Milan's most self-consciously international square, which makes the whole thing feel pleasingly theatrical.

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

The cocktail bar that decided pizza was the obvious food pairing, back when that was a radical idea in Milan. Dry is a lively, sociable spot on Via Solferino where the drinks are serious and the tables are meant to be shared, sometimes with strangers who are perfectly happy to share them. The room runs warm and international, the kind of place where arriving alone rarely stays that way for long.

1. 50 Top Pizza #15 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza 2025 · Best Cocktail List · 50 Top Pizza World Special Awards
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

Two rooftop pools and a cocktail bar on the fourth floor of a building in Milan's Porta Garibaldi district set the scene here: the kind of place that decided glamour and a proper dinner weren't mutually exclusive. Brass, marble, and vintage wood fill the interior while the terraces open onto skyscraper views. The kitchen keeps the Italian menu light and seasonal, and the cocktails have become a standard reference point for the city.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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

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

The black-and-white geometric mosaic walls do something clever with the glassware and smoked ceiling mirrors: the light never quite settles. This is the bar inside the Mandarin Oriental Milan, and it runs from espresso at eight in the morning all the way to a proper late night, organizing itself around aperitivo and the slower hours that follow. The outdoor sofas stay calm well into the evening before the room finds its louder gear.

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

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

A small cocktail bar with an industrial-meets-contemporary fit-out on a residential stretch between Porta Venezia and Piazzale Loreto, where boutique shops outnumber tourists. The team comes out of five-star luxury hotels, and it shows in the pacing and the polish, though the room itself is relaxed enough that nobody feels underdressed. Milanese regulars mix with the kind of international crowd that follows a good bartender from job to job.

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

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 Negroni Sbagliato was born here when the owner grabbed sparkling wine instead of gin and decided to serve it anyway. Bar Basso is an old-school neighborhood cocktail bar in Milan that has barely changed since the late fifties, and the happy accident has been the house drink ever since. Order yours in one of the enormous chalice glasses the original owner designed, a shape you'll start spotting around the city once you know to look.

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

1. Difford's Guide 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