Bulgari Hotels & Resorts, Milano

Class: Deluxe

Style: Contemporary classic

Rooms: 58

Milan’s public image as a grey and smoggy industrial town seems to have receded (even if the greyness and smog have not) in favor of its status as the Italian couture capital. And who better to have as your host in this city of conspicuous consumption than Bulgari, the famous jeweler, watchmaker and luxury-goods house.

The notion of a jeweler embarking on a hotel venture may smack of dilettantism, but a look at its century-plus history will show that Bulgari hasn’t gotten where it is today by wildly diversifying into a new business every year. And it just so happens that in this endeavor, they’ve had some quite expert help. The hotel is a joint venture with Ritz-Carlton, so expect no tentative first steps—this is a professional operation, not the fumbling first steps of an upstart.

Rooms are almost impossibly luxurious, in a way that is familiar (plush Frette-dressed beds, enormous black granite tubs) but is impressive in terms of sheer excess. Closets are palatial, perfectly suited to the style-conscious clientele, and gadgetry includes the expected flat-screen TV as well as a mobile phone programmed to the room’s extension. Some hotels boast about Bulgari bath amenities as a selling point—here, of course, it’s the house brand.

Perhaps unexpectedly for a smallish city boutique hotel, the Bulgari does have a restaurant, with a glass facade looking out onto the gardens of the grounds, formerly a monastery courtyard. Also accounted for are a spa, in a setting of emerald-green glass, and a swimming pool dressed in gold and green mosaic—again, two luxuries that might seem surprising were it not for the sheer overkill of this place.

The hotel is practically within a bejeweled arm’s length of some of Milan’s finest retailers and boutiques; its Brera location makes for easy access to the Golden Quadrangle, with Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace and Armani, among others, all gathered together in one place. The hotel offers a personal shopping service to those overwhelmed by the variety—sometimes there’s just too much to buy and too little time. And if a shopping spree induces guilty feelings, there’s always the Duomo and La Scala, offering up some high culture to soothe your couture-addled soul.