Editorial
The 8 best after work bars in Milan are the rooms that invented the aperitivo and the ones that pushed it forward. We read each for the early evening: the house drink, the snack that lands with it and the seat to claim before the office crowd arrives. From the bar that built the Negroni Sbagliato to a rooftop pool above Porta Garibaldi, these are the Milan aperitivo stops our editors send you to first.
Four rooms set the standard for the Milan after work hour, from a 1915 Campari bar to a designer rooftop.
Across the canals and into Brera, the list opens to the modern cocktail rooms and the Aperol terrace facing the Duomo.
For the definitive Milan after work drink, Bar Basso pairs the city's most important cocktail with a room that has not changed in decades. Camparino carries the history, Nottingham Forest pushes the form, and Ceresio 7 wins the rooftop. Start at Bar Basso with a Sbagliato and let the evening drift toward the canals.
Priya Nair is barsforKings' senior cocktail editor and a former Punch contributor. She reads a bar by its menu first: how the list is built, the house spirits, and the one drink worth ordering.