The world's most exclusive private club will open in Milan

It was announced in 2020, but we all know how that year turned out. Now, next December, the arrival of the world's most exclusive club in Milan seems a done deal. The club in question is CORE: originally opened in 2005 in New York City by Jennie Saunders and Dangene McKay-Bailey (both of whom changed their last names to "Enterprise" years ago), which the highly revered The New York Times called in 2011 a «portal to power». The club is a mixture of art, architecture, exclusive services including gastronomy, cinema, gym and beauty/wellness, as well as the chance to do the best networking in town - in Milan, the club's confirmed location, as Urbanfile reports, will be at Corso Matteotti 14, in a 4,000-square-foot building that includes terraces, hidden courtyards and, reportedly, even secret rooms and passages. The club is exactly what a person who could not afford the membership could imagine: movie screenings with Nicole Kidman as the host? Check. Star chefs at work behind the kitchen stove? Check. A program with hundreds of cultural events a year? Check.

Joining the club in America costs about $50,000 upfront plus $15,000 a year. Here in Italy, the cost will be different: 10,000 euros as a registration fee, plus an annual fee that should increase as we progress toward the December opening.  Members will be selected from the elite of the choicest and most wealthy professionals to be found in the city and Europe: fashion, business, politics, art and culture, and technology. The number of "vacancies" among club members is also set at 600 members, and again according to MilanoToday, the division will be organized as follows: «30% of the members will be Milanese, another 30% from all over the rest of Italy, 30% European and 10% from the rest of the world». And even if the real clubs in Milan are the informal ones that meet at random times in the city's most historic venues (think of how many high poppies gather to drink spritz with Mr. Idio at Bar Torrital or financiers eating spaghetti alle vongole at Rita & Antonio's), this CORE: seems to promise a kind of huge upgrade to Milanese high society life from which there is no going back.