Milan is high-pressure, a year round mix of fashion shows and furniture expositions, opera at La Scala, the Duomo cathedral, fine dining and retail. It makes sense, therefore, to stay in the city centre, where you can walk, or, if the weather permits, rent a bike from one of the many do-it-yourself stands around town. Here, in alphabetical order, are the best hotels in the hub of Milan.

Bulgari Milano is a quiet oasis in the Via Privata Fratelli Gabba cul-de-sac, 10 minutes from the Duomo. The former convent and its beautiful grounds launched the Bulgari hotel brand in 2004.As you would expect from designer Antonio Citterio – he who has made Technogym’s running machine a thing of beauty – nothing about the interiors is unnecessary.

The 52 rooms and suites have wooden floors and walls. Suite 316 is long, with the four-poster bed looking out over the gardens. The bed has outline-only wood posts: curtains are deemed unnecessary, as are flowers, but you are treated to Frette linens and Alain Milliat nectars.

Down at reception, one lounge winds into another, with big working log fireplace and dozens of serious art-culture books that you long to read. But you need to head on, down six stone steps to the theatre that is the restaurant. This flows from inside to the popular outdoor terrace and out to the garden. All tables seem to be packed with regular locals.

GM Attilio Marro, like all Milan’s great hoteliers, is an on-the-spot host, perhaps today welcoming members of the hotel’s 100-strong invitation-only ladies club, run by the formidable Contessa Marta Marzotto. No worries that you are not included – compensate with a tasting of Bulgari Il Cioccolato, perhaps the Sicilian orange flower, honey and lavender flavour.

Be good to yourself by using the 24-hour gym (Technogym, naturally – also found in the other two hotels suggested here), and the LED-lit interior pool (more plunge than laps) in thecretreat-like spa.

Four Seasons Hotel Milano’s spa opens in 2012, but many regular visitors to Milan opt, regardless, for this 118-room hotel, parts of which were originally a 1432 convent built around what is now a gorgeously green formal garden with manicured laurel trees.

The nerve-centre here is the lobby lounge, complete with 15th century frescoes on columns. From early morning espresso and biscotti – for those eschewing the served breakfast in the conservatory - like Veranda – through to late-night Avernas, this is a regular meeting place for the fashion pack and media, plus more than a handful of bankers.

For one of the most memorable stays, book the 109-square metre Brioni Suite, which has a loft-feel with mansard walls decorated in soft pinks and greys, with hints of purple.

Complete the experience with dinner at the kitchen table of Il Teatro restaurant. Passionate chef Sergio Mei will lay out antipasti you could only dream about, and explain every ham joint before carving to order. You will, like all diners in the adjacent main room, finish with a tour of the dedicated, candle-lit chocolate room to choose your own dessert(s).

Hotel GM Vincenzo Finizzola is the ideal retail concierge. He seems able to direct you to any boutique and atelier, often out of hours. Here, on Via Gesu, you are a stone’s throw away from such icons as Acqua di Parma, Cavalli and Versace.

Park Hyatt Milan is a conversion of an 1870 vintage bank one block over from the famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, finished five years earlier and still going strong. You are only five minutes from the Duomo, and double that to La Scala.

The 117-room hotel, run by exuberant GM Claudio Ceccherelli voted ‘Hotelier of the Year 2010’ by Virtuoso – makes up for the lack of green grass by a strong statement of art. At the rear of the central, glass-topped winter garden lobby lounge, for instance, is a stylised 1.9 square-metre head of Medusa, in black, white and gold glass by Argentine sculptor Lucio Fontana.

Stay in suite 219, one of six recently redone, and your salon, designed like the entire hotel by Ed Tuttle, has patchwork walls of grey Jim Thompson silks. The spa here features Dr Murad products from Los Angeles, as well as Tuttestetica from Bologna, and there is an inviting vitality pool.

The ultra-fit will revel in the yoga equipment and the bicycles that can be borrowed for free from the front desk. Alternatively, walk the Galleria and Duomo and check out the splendid Arcimboldo exhibition at the Palazzo Reale, opposite.

There will be yet another reason to return to marvellous Milan. The 90-room Armani Hotel Milano, literally on the upper floors of the Spazio Armani superstore on Via Manzoni, opens soon.