Magna Pars - L'Hotel a Parfum

Magna Pars - L'Hotel a Parfum

Magna Pars occupies the former home of Marvin, a Milanese cosmetics company founded by the Martone family in 1940, on the quiet Via Forcella a short walk from the noise of Zona Tortona, Milan's design and fashion district. In 2013, three generations after the factory's founding, the family turned the building into what it bills as the world's first perfume-themed hotel, naming each of the 68 suites after a fragrance note, fruity, aromatic, flowery, woody or resinous, and adding its own perfume laboratory, LabSolue, where guests can watch how those scents are made. That link between a working lab and the rooms it inspired is not something found elsewhere in the city. The Secret Gardens on site grow bergamot, jasmine and olive trees that recur in the suite fragrances, and the rooftop bar, LabSolue Bar, carries the idea outdoors with an olive grove above the rooftops. An art collection running through the lobby, library and other public rooms includes work by Gustavo Aceves and Omar Hassan, changing rather than fixed. The hotel welcomes pets, keeps a gym, offers massage and steam-room treatments, and runs Liquidambar, a restaurant pairing Italian dishes with scent. Porta Genova metro station is six minutes on foot, useful for guests moving between here and the center of Milan. Anyone who takes scent as a serious craft, or wants a hotel with an actual story behind its design, will find one built for them. Guests after a plain, neutral room or a big anonymous lobby should book elsewhere. Few hotels can say they invented their own category, and Magna Pars still runs on the idea that did it. Milan's only hotel built entirely around scent: 68 suites named for fragrance notes, a working perfume lab, and gardens grown for the same notes. Book it for the story and the craft, not for a plain room or a big lobby.