Illustration by Fig & Ginger, drawn from the review. The venue's own photo is on its way.
Historic pastry shop and café in Magenta, Milan
Pasticceria Marchesi 1824
Two Hundred Years Behind the Counter
Marchesi opened in 1824. That is before Italy was a country. The Marchesi family made their name on pastry and on panettone done by hand, and early in the twentieth century Angelo Marchesi started pouring coffee and aperitif cocktails as well, which turned a pastry shop into the kind of café where Milan comes to be seen behaving well.
The original on Via Santa Maria alla Porta, near Corso Magenta, still has its coffered ceilings and early twentieth century fittings, and it feels like walking into a jewellery box that happens to smell of butter and cocoa. Stand at the bar. Order an espresso and something small. The counters are full of the house classics: marron glacé, pralines and cremini, gianduiotti, biscuits, and panettone, which they make all year round. In 2024 they marked their bicentenary with a whole programme built on four ingredients: chocolate, coffee, vanilla and chestnut.
These days Marchesi belongs to the Prada Group, and there are polished branches on Via Monte Napoleone, in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and on Mount Street in London. They are lovely and they are busy. The old shop is the one to cross town for. It is not cheap and it does not pretend to be. Two centuries of practice rarely is.
- Order this
- An espresso at the bar, Marron glacé, A box of cremini or pralines, A panettone to carry home
- The damage
- $$$
- Go
- A weekday morning at the original shop, before the shopping crowd wakes up
- Find it
- Via Santa Maria alla Porta 11/a, 20123 Milano MI, Italy
- Website
- marchesi1824.com