How much a cellar costs to rent in Milan (and what you pay beyond the rent)

The short answer

A cellar for rent in Milan starts at about €50-200 a month for 2-10 m², according to PiùSpazio's estimates. Among the listings we read, they run from €150 for 6 m² to €350 for 30 m² (ioaffitto). Registration, deposit and fees come on top of the rent.

I pick up and store other people's belongings in Milan, so on this topic I'm the innkeeper you ask whether the wine is any good. So you don't have to trust me, I put the listing numbers first, with links, and mine after. If the cellar wins in the end, I'll say so.

What cellars actually cost in the listings

Table first. These are estimates and listings read on 1 October 2026: listings change every week (more often than my weekend plans), and PiùSpazio's estimates date from May 2024.

What it costs per square meter, and why the rent isn't enough

Doing the math on the listings, the 6 m² cellar in Viale Montello costs €25 per square meter a month. The 30 m² one in Via Savona about €11.70. The bigger it is, the less you pay per meter: the usual discount on floor space nobody will ever really fill.

The rent is the easy part, though. A cellar's price is like a concert ticket: on the site it looks honest, then the other items arrive. Here they are, so you can ask before signing.

• **Registering the contract.** For leases of "other properties" the Italian Revenue Agency gives 2% of the annual rent, with a minimum of €67 for the first year. On €150 a month 2% would be €36, so you pay the minimum. Landlord and tenant are jointly liable, and you should ask the landlord which category applies to your cellar.

• **Deposit.** In residential leases the cap is three months' rent, fees excluded. For a cellar on its own, get in writing how many months the landlord asks for and when it comes back.

• **Building fees.** PiùSpazio lists them among the questions to ask first: rent, taxes, building fees, deposit. A listing that only quotes the rent is quoting part of the price.

• **The contract.** Length, notice, renewal. I won't tell you what you'll find: PiùSpazio advises reading it carefully before signing, which is the cheapest advice in the article.

Is damp a cost? Your stuff pays it

A cellar has a problem no listing puts up front: it's underground. I know, groundbreaking news. According to idealista/news the ideal humidity for storing things is 40-60%, and cellars get damp in three ways: capillary rise through the wall, side infiltration and condensation.

Listings write "dry" with the same optimism furniture showrooms write "easy assembly". A listing can say it, but you can check: a stale smell, dark patches low on the wall, white salt deposits. If it smells stale, you're visiting a place for mold, not for boxes.

The same guide recommends metal shelves rather than wood, 10 cm from the walls, clothes in vacuum bags and documents in sealed plastic boxes, lifted off the floor. In other words: the cellar costs €100 a month, plus whatever you spend convincing it not to ruin your things.

You do the transport, twice

No cellar listing includes the van. Renting a cellar is like buying a wardrobe: the price covers the wardrobe, not carrying it up three flights of stairs.

You bring the things there, by car or van, and you bring them back when you move or the contract ends. Those are the two trips that aren't in the rent and that, in real life, land on the Saturday you'd promised to someone else.

If the cellar is in your own building it's one flight of stairs, and that's fine. If it's on the other side of Milan, weigh the trip as a second line of spending: fuel, parking, time. For a sofa with two people it's a whole Saturday afternoon, and a friendship tested on the landing.

When the cellar wins (and when you should take it)

Here's the part a storage seller usually skips: **if you need your things often, a cellar near home wins.** Tools, books you look things up in, bikes, tires for the seasonal swap: a door a hundred meters away beats any van that comes to fetch them.

It also wins when you have a car, few things that survive damp (ceramics, tools, empty suitcases) and a low rent with known fees. And when you need it for years, you're not moving and a Saturday afternoon in a van holds no fear for you.

That's not a flaw in my service: the cellar was made for people whose things are a few steps away. We were made for people whose things aren't.

When storage with home pickup is the better deal

If you have no cellar, or you do but it's full of the previous tenant's things (there's always a bike with no wheels), the math changes. I pick your things up at home and keep them in a warehouse that is indoors, dry and access-controlled. The warehouse can't be visited: that's why it works for things you rarely use, and not for the ones you need on Thursday.

The mechanism is this, and you can read it in full on the pricing page: you pay a monthly rate for the square meters you take up, from 1 m², and the pickup once at the start. The rate covers storage. Redelivery you book when needed and pay for then. If you commit to more months, the discount goes on the pickup, never on the rate.

Storage is open-ended: it carries on month by month and you stay as long as you like. To end it, you ask for the full redelivery from your account, with no cancellation fees. If you only want part of it back, you write to Smoves what you need and the rest stays in storage.

For a spot that stays for years, the page on long-term storage in Milan explains how it works. To work out how many meters you need, the space calculator lets you choose item by item. And if you want to know why this is a cellar without the cellar, there's the page on renting a cellar in Milan and the storage alternative.