More than a boutique one, what Aldo Cibic has created for the Blu Hotels Group in via Savona 18, Milan, is a real design hotel that overcomes the concept of a luxury but small, intimate and customized accommodation to restore the atmosphere of a city. Savona 18 Suites tells the story of a recovery – of an old “casa di ringhiera” (a tenement with communal balcony) – and of a typical Milanese composure in which even eccentricity finds sense and balance. Cibic insisted on preserving the architectural image of the historical building of the early 20th century, bringing elements of strong modernity in furnishing and décor.

A lobby that is an art gallery, a small café decorated with sofas, carpets,  chandeliers,  mirrors  and  accessories, an internal courtyard of 310 square meters that is also an open-air living room with a mural made by Cibic himself in order “to quote an incomplete and poetic skyline” that vaguely reminds the geometric wall by Sara Morris in front of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. “Different fruits that stay together”, says Cibic, who brings together elements that are so different from each other.

The reception desk, anything but serious and informal, is the cabinet of hospitality, so it is red, warm, ethnic, Tibet-inspired; in front of it, the furniture you don’t expect: a bench of yellow tiles that recalls the cold geometries of the Sixties and Seventies. In another room, some Fratelli Boffi’s armchairs in a bright acid-green velvet evoke those tearooms of the Milanese liberty (impossible not to think about Marchesi’s confectionery by Prada) that are combined with a super-minimalist square table and several small colored glass sculptures. Everything is designed by Cibic and it can be purchased by guests, whether they accommodate in the 20 square meters Comfort Rooms or in the smaller Savona View Suites, to take away, literally, with themselves a piece of the age-old Milan.