Artico Gelateria Tradizionale

Isola Gelato With a School Attached

3.5 of 5

Gelato in Milan is a numbers game. There are hundreds of shops, and too many of them sell the same neon pistachio out of the same industrial tubs. Artico is the other kind. It opened in 2012 in Isola, the old working neighbourhood north of Porta Garibaldi, when the businessman Giuseppe Fioretti teamed up with the master gelato maker Maurizio Poloni. The Isola shop became the local reference almost at once, and it is still the one to visit.

Here is how you know they mean it. Everything is made fresh every day in the shop's own laboratory, with no colourings, no hydrogenated fats and no artificial flavourings. The display rotates constantly, so the flavour you loved last time may be gone, and that is the point. In 2016 the family opened a gelato school, and they say it has helped start around a hundred gelaterie. When the people training other gelato makers are scooping your cup, you are in good hands.

Every October the Isola shop turns into a temple of chocolate for the Chocolate Show, a weekend that reached its fourteenth edition in 2025. Plan around it if you can. The rest of the year, keep it simple: pick two flavours, take your cup outside, and walk Isola's streets while it melts. Artico now has shops near the Duomo, in Città Studi and on Via Solari too. Start with the first one.

Order this: Whatever chocolate flavours are in the case, A seasonal fruit flavour, A cup of two, not a cone of four
The damage: $
Go: Any evening, it is open until 11; in October for the Chocolate Show weekend
Find it: Via Porro Lambertenghi 25, 20159 Milano
Website: gruppoartico.com