Piranesi Lounge Milan Linate: a small museum with mediocre food and jet-set patrons

Last visit: August 2025

My rating: 10/10 (for art lovers); otherwise 6/10

Airport: Milan Linate

Access method: Priority Pass

The Piranesi Lounge at Linate stands out for an element that makes it unique in the panorama of airport lounges: the prints of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the 18th-century engraver who gave shape to the Roman architectural imagination with unparalleled visionary power. To find oneself surrounded by these grandiose views is an experience that bestows upon the lounge an unexpected aura, almost a call to an intellectual journey as well as a physical one. It is rare for such a functional space as a lounge to succeed, through art, in evoking a sense of depth and historical breath.

On this level, the Piranesi Lounge deserves unreserved praise: it is not just a place of transit, but a space that stimulates both the gaze and the mind, adorned with the works of one of the greatest, most sublime engravers of all time.

From this perspective, then, the Piranesi Lounge is nothing less than a huge, resounding, astonished wow!

Modest spaces and uninspired food

Beyond the splendor of the prints, reality becomes more subdued. The spaces are modest—not cramped, but lacking the breadth one would expect from a lounge in an international airport like Linate. The furnishings are functional, without flair or refinement.

The food falls along a line of plain normality: a few snacks, simple offerings, little more than basic sustenance for those waiting for their flight. No real flaws, but not a single reason for enthusiasm either.

A former supermodel with the accent on the à

When I visited the lounge on Ferragosto, I expected to find it swarming with tourists in transit on what is, in every sense, the hottest day of the year. Instead, I found it completely empty (another major positive aspect); I was almost ready to overlook the poor quality of the food and the bare-bones services when the small lounge was suddenly invaded by a former President of the French Republic, accompanied by a former supermodel and singer-songwriter with the accent on the à, along with the inevitable entourage of bodyguards, aides, secret service agents, and plainclothes policemen. They brought with them a gust of transalpine–Savoy high-society chaos — a surreal scene worthy of a Marx Brothers film, or perhaps of Jacques Tati.

All in all: a surprising and entirely unexpected museum-like experience, a quiet and secluded environment, a jet-set invasion from across the Alps, and abysmal food. Mixing it all together… well, Piranesi Lounge, I’ll give you an 8/10. Next time, I’ll expect to find a president with a bizarre blond tuft in the company of a former Slovenian model, trailed by a procession of CIA and FBI agents.