Hotel Villa Malpensa

Hotel Villa Malpensa is less than a five-minute drive from the Milan Malpensa airport. This stately, four-story formal mansion was once the home of the counts of Caproni (one of the wealthiest families of northern Italy). This is more of a commercial hotel than a charming small inn and lacks the personal touch of an owner-managed property, but if you are nervous about catching an early morning flight, its location can’t be beat. You enter into a formal hallway painted a soft-cream color, with a soaring ceiling, walls enhanced by ornate plaster sculpturing, marble floors, and Oriental carpets. Throughout the original core of the hotel, the past magnificence of this 1931 villa lives on through ornate architectural features. However, throughout the rest of the hotel there is no great flair to the décor. The furnishings are contemporary, but you cannot fault the amenities. All of the guestrooms have built-in headboards with proper reading lights, comfortable mattresses, satellite televisions, mini-bars, direct-dial telephones, hairdryers, and air conditioning. The standard rooms are not large, but the superior rooms are more spacious and some have balconies where you can watch the planes taking off and landing.