NEW FOR SUMMER 2026

The Historic Cova Comes to
Grand Hotel Miramare

This season, we’ll serve Cova’s artisanal gelato from a retro-inspired cart beside our pool. There will be cones, cups, and difficult decisions to be made. Crema or pistachio? Cioccolato o frutta ? One scoop or two? For children, this is paradise. For grown-ups, very nearly the same.

Since 1817, Cova has given Milan some of its most enduring daily pleasures.
First opened beside Teatro alla Scala, the pasticceria is famous for its carefully laminated pastries, silver trays and fine porcelain.

A celebration of Italian-ness, Cova knows exactly how things should be done. It’s why their presence at Grand Hotel Miramare feels so fitting.

For children, this is paradise. For grown-ups, very nearly the same.

A Milanese institution

After opening over two centuries ago as a literary café, Cova quickly became one of the city’s great meeting places. A favored refuge before, after and during the theater. A gathering point for artists and society figures. And a discreet stage for the cultural life of the Risorgimento.

The likes of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini were among those who helped make Cova part of Milan’s mythology, while Ernest Hemingway later gave the shop its own literary afterlife in ‘A Farewell to Arms’…

“I would have liked to be in Milan with her: to take her to dinner at Cova, and then walk along Via Manzoni.”

In 1950, Cova moved to Via Monte Napoleone to be at the heart of Milan’s fashion district. Surrounded by the great houses of Italian style, and now present across the world, it continues to pass down years of hard-learned craft and hospitality.

Gelato by the pool?

What we admire most about Cova is its continuity. They have kept faith with the same essentials: excellent ingredients, careful hands, elegant service and the belief that pleasure must be treated with seriousness.

That kind of consistency is rare. It is also very much at home at the Mira.

Throughout this summer, the Cova cart will be waiting for you by our pool, harking back to the Italian holidays of another era - part afternoon indulgence and part Riviera tableau, with the Gulf of Tigullio shining blue just beyond the palm trees.

Cova’s gelato will also appear on our Vistamare Restaurant menu, proof that the best ideas are worth trying twice a day.

A taste of Estate Italiana

There is something wonderfully chaotic about gelato.

Children compare flavors as parents pretend to be practical. Someone changes their mind at the final second while the queue behind waits with admirable impatience. Someone furiously licks the sides to avoid any melted drops going to waste while another drops their cone before they’ve even begun.

In other words, this is Estate Italiana behaving exactly as it should.

Estate Italiana is often remembered through elegant imagery. Boats crossing the bay, linen at lunch, umbrellas in neat rows and the bright blue hour before dinner.

This is all true, but at the Miramare, Estate Italiana is also felt in the smaller moments.

A spoonful of gelato passed between generations. A sliver of vanilla sticking to your nose. A book left open, face down, because lunch has arrived. A child coming back from the sea with wet hair and urgent news.

With Cova beside our pool, that feeling has one more expression. A little Milanese ceremony. A little Riviera nostalgia. A little paradise in a cone.

Find the cart in the afternoon, choose slowly, and take your gelato somewhere with a view of the water. Summer is sweet. Come and spend it here.