Apartment great, check-in awful.
Check in: ★
The first thing I should mention is that the check-in process from ItalianWay is highly unusual for an Airbnb. You must present yourself in an impossible-to-find location at the Milano Centrale train station, no exceptions. There is no one to answer the phone when you call to ask for directions. They only allow a maximum of 30 days for rental and then they charge you an exorbitant fee (Upwards of EUR2500) to rent for the remainder. They will swap out the contract that you made with Airbnb for one of their leasing contracts. None of this information was noted on Airbnb either so we were sideswiped by additional fees and contracts. They did allow us to change our lease to just 30 days, however, so this saved us these fees. They also require a green pass to check-in as they operate as a hotel under hospitality rules, to be sure to have a valid pass.
Apartment:
Location: ★★★★★
The apartment itself was in a fantastic location on Corso Garibaldi, right in the heart of Milan with a short walking distance to many stores, the Parco Sempione, and 20 minutes walk to the Duomo. I really couldn't have asked for a better location. Grocery stores are also close by.
Amenities: ★★★★
The apartment was fairly well equipped, though it didn't have a microwave or a toaster. The pots and pans were fairly old and rusty, so we had to buy new ones. There was an adequate amount of dishes as well. The door guard was very nice and accommodating and he showed us how to deal with the garbage. The shower was a fairly large size, but the bathroom was extremely small. The showerhead also only goes up to your waist, so there is no overhead shower. The internet is extremely fast (100MB down, 80MB up), but the router that it's attached to is very slow and the WiFi doesn't reach the entire apartment sacrificing almost 90% of the speed. When I added my own router and wired it to a different location, the service around the apartment improved. The lighting in the apartment was extremely dark and broken as well, I had to change the lights to increase the brightness, which helped a lot. There was an adequate amount of towels and linens. There is an elevator to the apartment on the 4th floor, and you have to climb another set of stairs to access the apartment. Absolutely not disability-friendly.
Noise: ★
The apartment was extraordinarily noisy at night, the street cleaners and dump trucks do all of their cleaning in the middle of the night, so at 2:00am all you can hear is a truck binning glass which would wake us up. The windows themselves are very poorly insulated and have lots of cracks. So the apartment would be drafty at night and the noise would come right in. Corso Garibaldi is a fairly busy night-life street, so it was easy to hear people talking and shouting. The bedroom faces the street.
Design: ★★★★
The apartment to me seemed to be designed very well and could have been a very high-end apartment at one time, but has since become fairly dated. The access to the bedroom and the bathroom was very tight with multiple doors blocking the entrance and the door to the bedroom only opens halfway because of a large armoire in the way. So if you don't mind feeling claustrophobic getting into and out of the bathroom, then everything else about the apartment is great.