Rosa Grand Milano - Starhotels Collezione

Twenty-first-century Milan is still an industrial center, but one that focuses on creative industry at the expense of manufacturing. So it’s no wonder the hospitality scene has been looking considerably brighter. Today’s business visitors, after all, are more likely to be designers, editors or buyers than managers or technicians. And if the result is that more and more Milanese hotels end up looking like the Starhotels Rosa Grand, then that’s definitely an improvement for hotel fans.

There’s nothing necessarily revolutionary here, just a swanky and stylish hotel that does its best to live up to its location in central Milan. But what a location, especially given its partnership with Italian cuisine titan Eataly, whose products grace the tables of restaurants Roses and Sfizio as well as Grand Bar & Lounge — all, of course, "by Eataly."

The guidebooks will point out that you’re a stone’s throw from the Duomo, but more relevant for the purposes of most Starhotels guests is the fact that you’re just off Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, the mainstream shopping boulevard that plays the accessible foil to the rarefied boutique heights of the Golden Quadrangle. And at the end of a long shopping day the Rosa Grand is there to welcome you back. What could so easily have been a dull beige business hotel is made lively by a bit of visual sense — this sort of thing really ought to be standard.