Milan Cocktail Bars Guide: Campari, Negroni & the Art of Aperitivo

Milan is the city that invented aperitivo culture — the early-evening ritual of drinks with free accompanying food that has spread worldwide but still reaches its apogee here. Beyond the familiar Aperol Spritz, Milan's cocktail scene has developed into one of Europe's most sophisticated, with a generation of bartenders who trained in London and New York returning to apply serious technique to Italian spirits and local flavours.

The Campari connection is existential: the liqueur was invented in Novara near Milan in 1860, and its relationship with the city — the Campari advertising campaigns, the Galleria Campari museum in Sesto San Giovanni, the Camparino in Galleria bar (in operation since 1915 at the base of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II) — runs deep. A Campari soda at Camparino is a rite of passage, taken standing at the marble bar with a view of the Duomo facade framed by the Galleria's glass arch.

The Brera and Navigli districts host the highest concentration of serious cocktail bars. Bar Basso near the Porta Venezia is a Milan institution: the birthplace of the Negroni Sbagliato (made with prosecco instead of gin, created here by accident in the 1970s) and the venue that hosted design week aperitivo events for decades. The Isola neighbourhood's newer bars — Frida, Casina del Lago, and the small craft cocktail spots on Via Thaon di Revel — attract a younger, more design-conscious crowd who take their drinks as seriously as their furniture.