Mill Meeting Rooms Meetings in a 15th-century estate,
among the rice fields

The Mill Meeting Rooms are the meeting spaces of La Torre dei Canonici: a meeting room set in the Antico Mulino, the old mill of a fifteenth-century estate at Lumellogno, a few kilometres from Novara, in the middle of the Piedmont rice fields. The room seats up to forty people theatre-style and up to twelve around a single board table. And on the day of your meeting, the Residence hosts no other event.

Companies looking for a meeting room in a historic estate near Milan are usually looking for exactly this: a place that does not resemble a conference centre, where an important decision is given the time and the silence it deserves. Here the road arrives through the rice fields, the medieval tower appears beyond the trees, and the working day begins before anyone has sat down.

From grinding grain to gathering people

The Mill is an independent building within the estate: this is where the grain of the surrounding countryside was once milled, and the name has stayed on to remember it. Today the same walls host board meetings, leadership sessions and training days, over two floors that carry a full working day comfortably. The main room is generous and bright, with natural light from the original windows; beside it, a second room can be laid out as a dining room or as a break space, so that coffee and the working lunch have a room of their own, a few steps from the one where the discussion happens.

The room is arranged around the work of the day:

• Single table, for boards and executive committees of up to twelve.
• U-shape, for workshops and sessions built on frequent exchange.
• Theatre, for presentations and training of up to forty people.

Between one session and the next, the break moves under the portico or into the garden: a cup of coffee looking out over the rice fields, a few minutes of open air before going back in. Those are the minutes that give a day its rhythm, and it is often there that conversations take the step they had not yet taken in the room.

The technical side is designed to be forgotten. An LG interactive whiteboard with a touch screen projects and takes notes in one device, and connects to your laptop by cable or USB; a sound system with wireless microphones serves the larger audiences, and a flipchart remains at hand for those who still think best with a marker. High-speed wi-fi covers all the rooms of the Mill, and the air conditioning does its work without being noticed.

The hours around the meeting

A meeting room should also be judged by what it offers when no one is sitting at the table. At the Torre, those hours have the tone of a private drawing room: the bordeaux leather of the sofas, the beamed ceilings, the wrought-iron chandeliers. The negotiation that needs two people standing at a window, the private phone call, the half hour of breathing space between two sessions: in an offsite held in a historic residence, all of this finds its place naturally, without booking another room.

The Residence is yours

When you choose the Mill Meeting Rooms, you share the day with no one: we never combine two events on the same day. The room, the grounds and the attention of the people welcoming you stay devoted to your group, from arrival to the last coffee. It is a rare form of exclusivity, and for certain days it is exactly what is needed. The same rule holds for private events and celebrations: one event, the whole Residence.

Milan, Malpensa and the roads of Piedmont

Quiet should cost the traveller nothing. The Residence is about forty-five minutes by car from Milan and about forty from Malpensa airport, with the A4 and A26 motorway exits close by; from Turin, allow a little over an hour. For anyone flying in for a same-day meeting, the Malpensa number is the one that counts. And it is the right measure for a corporate offsite near Milan: the group feels elsewhere, and the journey never weighs on the agenda. If your meeting falls in a trade-fair week, we can also tell you about where to stay for the Milan trade fairs.

The wellness area a few steps away, and an evening

For meetings that close in the afternoon, the Residence offers a natural sequel. A few steps from the Mill, the wellness area awaits with a Finnish sauna, Turkish bath, emotional showers and a Jacuzzi hot tub: open from 8 am to 9 pm, by reservation with at least one day’s notice, at a dedicated rate that is independent of any overnight stay. An hour of silence before the group dinner, or simply before the journey home. Times and conditions are on the page of our wellness area.

For teams staying the night, the eleven rooms of the Residence each carry the name of a flower, with furniture chosen piece by piece: no two are alike, and together they welcome a working group of up to about thirty people. The buffet breakfast is served on the ground floor of the Torre, or in the garden in fine weather, from 7.30 to 10 am. For breaks, light lunches and group dinners the Residence relies on a trusted catering partner, who builds each proposal around the programme of the day; the service is available from about twenty guests. And anyone staying an extra day will find the countryside around the Residence, with its rice fields, castles and lakes.

A working day ends better if it does not end on a motorway.

Where the Mill works best

Not every working day is looking for the same place, and we would rather tell you plainly where the Mill Meeting Rooms give their best:

• Board meetings in a historic residence: executive committees and small boards, up to twelve people around a single table.
• Leadership offsites: annual planning, vision sessions, alignments that need distance from the office.
• Workshops and training days of up to forty people, with breaks in the garden.
• Meetings with clients and partners that deserve a different register of hospitality: private presentations, negotiations, board sessions.

With the same frankness, we will tell you where we are not the right choice: conventions of hundreds of participants and high-rotation training courses ask for a different scale. Ours is a contained one, and it is the reason so many companies, after their first day here, come back.

Tell us about the occasion

Organising a meeting at the Torre begins with a conversation. You tell us about the occasion, the number of participants, the dates you have in mind, whether you expect an overnight stay or an hour in the wellness area; on that basis our reception prepares a personalised quotation.

If the date is in demand, you can hold an option on it for fifteen days and settle your internal agenda calmly before confirming. And if you would rather see the spaces before deciding, we will gladly welcome you for a visit: the full picture is on our page of business solutions and meeting rooms.