GelatoSpots

Research edition

Italy

Milan

Can a city better known for design than for cooking out-make the places that invented gelato?

Milan is not where gelato was invented, but Gambero Rosso's 2024 Tre Coni guide put six of its shops at the top of the country's own scorecard — more than Rome (five) and more than Bologna (three), with Naples registering none. The six span a food scientist who wrote his university thesis on emulsifier substitution and now runs experiments out of a former early-1900s print works, a Novate-trained maestro gelatiere who built a five-shop group and a training school for others, and a trio who spent five years quietly rebuilding a neighbourhood shop's recipes after abandoning semi-finished mixes. Around them sit a ninety-year-old family gelateria that has never carried more than twelve flavours and a station-side kiosk running since 1947 with its original counter. The open question the guide does not settle is whether Milan is rewarding gelato-making or design-literate retail: Pavé's gelato arrived four years after its pastry case did, and Terra Gelato's own trade press flagged its Eataly tie-up as a reason to question how 'artisanal' it still is.

Last checked 2026-08-21

The selected spots

5 selected

  1. 01

    Ciacco

    gelato · Stefano Guizzetti, founder and gelatiere; born 1982 in Bergamo

    Ciacco is the strongest single method story in the Milan set: a food-science thesis on emulsifier substitution, converted into a shop that states plainly what it leaves out, and now into a public research laboratory in a former print works that centralises everything the Ciacco name makes. It is also the only Milan Tre Coni shop with an independent critic naming it the best gelato in the country by name, in print.

  2. 02

    Artico

    gelato · Maurizio Poloni, maestro gelatiere and co-founder

    Poloni's path runs through two family and small-town gelaterias before Artico, and the company he built afterwards trains other operators rather than only selling gelato - an explicit claim to specialist authority beyond one counter, corroborated by press coverage of the Tre Coni win.

  3. 03
    A maker in whites pouring a stream of yellow mix over rows of pale spheresFrom Crema

    Crema

    gelato · Claudio Torce, gelatiere (Rome-trained), with entrepreneur Giorgio Bulgari

    A five-year-old shop that already holds Tre Coni, built on a named split between the money (Bulgari) and the craft (Torce, trained in Rome before moving north) - and specific enough in its chocolate and zabaione ranges to be checked flavour by flavour against two independent write-ups.

  4. 04
    A tub of gelato under sauce and toppings on a green groundFrom Lo Gnomo Gelato

    Lo Gnomo Gelato

    gelato · Andrea Bistaffa, Francesca Acquaviva and Marco Summonte, who together run the shop

    The clearest before/after story in the Milan set, told with named suppliers on both sides of the change: a shop that ran on semi-finished mixes for five years, then rebuilt its ingredient list one supplier at a time and now states in detail what it refuses to use.

  5. 05

    Umberto 1934

    gelato · Elio Martinuzzi (84, son-in-law of the founder) and his son Stefano Umberto Martinuzzi (grandson of the founder)

    The clearest longevity record in the Milan set: ninety years at one address, three generations, a flavour count that has never exceeded twelve, and a founder who trained in Naples before Milan ever had a Tre Coni to award - a direct answer to the question of whether Milan can out-make the places that invented gelato.

Research notes

City boundary

The comune of Milano. Monza, Novate Milanese and Seregno are separate comuni and their places do not count toward Milan.