Long before it became the world’s fashion centre, Milan was the capital of the art world
In the 15th century the Duke of Milan, Ludovico il Moro, decided to surround himself by the most important artists of the period. Leonardo da Vinci was appointed ‘pictor ducalis’ (the duke’s painter) and created the greatest work of the period, The Last Supper, which can still be seen today, albeit in a sadly deteriorated condition, in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper‘
Art of the 15th and 16th centuries came to be described as Renaissance, a term coined to describe the artistic changes which occurred after the Middle Ages with a revival of interest in the classical period of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Today, Milan has many fine museums which trace the city’s contribution to the art world from that time to the present day.
Inaugurated by Napoleon in 1809 with the aim of establishing the ‘Louvre of Italy’, the Pinacoteca Di Brera (Brera Picture Gallery) is the city’s biggest public gallery. Many of the works were confiscated from churches and convents during the French conquest of northern Italy, so there is a large number of religious paintings and altarpieces.
Pinacoteca Di Brera (Brera Picture Gallery)
Containing one of the world’s most important collections of Italian paintings, the rooms are organised chronologically from the 13th century onwards and are stuffed with masterpieces by the likes of Raphael, Bellini, Caravaggio, Canaletto, Guardi, Tiepolo and Tintoretto.
Unique to the Pinacoteca is the Conservation Lab, a large, glass-encased workshop where visitors can watch on big screens while restorers work on paintings. In the courtyard stands Antonio Canova’s monumental sculpture Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker (there is also a plaster version inside), while the surrounding Brera district has a number of contemporary art galleries.
Visitors can watch works being restored through the windows of the Conservation Lab.
Less than 200 metres away, the Palazzo Citterio was opened in 2024 to house the Pinacoteca’s collections of modern Italian art. The Pinacoteca and the Citterio are part of a project to create a new cultural complex, the Grande Brera, on the model of Florence or Rome. The Citterio has works by leading lights of Italian art such as Umberto Boccioni, Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio Morandi and Giorgio De Chirico alongside international counterparts such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.
Palazzo Citterio
The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana was established in 1618 based on a collection donated by its founder, Cardinal Federico Borromeo. It is most famous for holding the Codex Atlanticus, the world’s largest collection of original Leonardo Da Vinci drawings. There is also a fine collection of 15th to 17th century Italian, Flemish and German paintings as well as sculptures, frescoes, bronzes and mosaics from the second century onwards. Highlights include Vermiglio’s Judith and Holofernes, Da Vinci’s Portrait of a Musician, Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit, Botticelli’s Madonna of the Pavilion, Titian’s Adoration of the Kings and Da Vinci’s Portrait of a Musician.
In the northern part of the city close to two metro lines, the Pirelli HangarBicocca is a must for fans of contemporary art. Supported by the famous tyre manufacturer and run as a public institution with no entrance fee, the former train factory boasts some 15,000 square metres, making it one of the largest single-level exhibition spaces in Europe. The sheer scale means that visitors are virtually immersed in the works.
Fausto Melotti’s ‘La Sequenza’ greets visitors to the Pirelli HangarBicocca.
Two of the vast spaces host major solo exhibitions by established and emerging Italian and international artists, while another is home to the tour de force, a permanent, site-specific installation by Anselm Kiefer realised for the museum’s opening in 2002. This comprises five large canvases and The Seven Heavenly Palaces, a group of towers between 14 and 18 metres high made of stacked shipping containers and reinforced concrete. Awe-inspiring at first sight, they are named for palaces described in a Hebrew text and represent various themes themes such as man’s aspiration to ascend to heaven via tall architectural structures and the ruination of Europe after WWII.
Part of Anselm Kiefer’s permanent installation at the Pirelli HangarBicocca
In the city centre next to the magnificent ‘duomo’ (cathedral), the Museo del Novecento (Museum of the 20th Century) houses a collection by Italian, particularly Milanese, artists. Visitors follow a ramp coiling up through the building into a series of spaces where over 400 chronologically displayed works provide a great introduction to modern Italian art.
The collection begins in 1902 and travels through movements such as Futurism (the Italian avant-garde), Novecento (which was officially launched at the 1924 Venice Biennale), Abstraction and Arte Povera (‘poor art’, which is made using common materials), finishing with Pop Art. The museum also pays tribute to other international avant-garde art movements with works by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian. Bonus: A so-close-you-could-reach-out-and-touch-it view of the cathedral from the top floor.
Across the square is the Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace), for centuries the city’s seat of government and today a cultural centre and exhibition venue. It regularly shows modern and contemporary art in cooperation with museums around the world.
The building suffered severe fire damage in a WWII bombing raid and in 1953 the rebuilt Hall of the Caryatids (named for the sculpted female figures looking down from the eaves) was chosen by Picasso for an exhibition which included his anti-war painting Guernica. The walls have been patched up, but much of the damage has been left bare as a reminder of war’s destruction. Other, more opulent chambers can also be visited.
Opposite the world famous La Scale Opera House, the Gallerie d’Italia is spread over three magnificently frescoed and stuccoed ‘palazzi’. The enormous collection, dedicated mainly to 18th to 20th century art, was amassed from Venice Biennale exhibitions and the private collections of sovereigns and aristocrats. It is now owned by the Intesa Sanpaolo bank, Italy’s biggest.
Gallerie d’Italia
The permanent exhibition From Canova to Boccioni focuses on Milan as Italy’s main artistic centre in the 1800s, with paintings of the cathedral, ‘navigli’ (canals), streets and everyday life showing how much (and how little) the city has changed over the years.
The bank’s former vault now contains treasures of a different kind.
Bonus: The bank’s former vault contains hundreds of 20th century works by Italian and international heavy hitters such as De Chirico, Rothko, Johns, Flavin, Rauschenberg, Ernst and Picasso. It is usually open to visitors, accompanied by an art historian, on the third Thursday of every month. The Gallerie d’Italia also has branches in Vicenza, Turin and Naples.
Opposite the charming Public Gardens the Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAM) occupies the 18th century Villa Reale, which was donated to the City of Milan by the tobacco trader Carlo Grassi along with his collection of 19th century Italian works, Asian art objects and a works by international artists such as Manet, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir and Cézanne – the only works by these masters in a Milan museum. Expanded by a further bequest of works by Modigliani, Vuillard, Dufy, Matisse, Picasso and others, the collection is shown in magnificent period rooms, while the villa is surrounded by an English landscape garden, the first in Milan.
Literally next door to GAM, the building which houses the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, or PAC (‘padiglione’ means pavilion) is now in its third incarnation. Originally the site of the Villa Reale stables, it was destroyed by bombing in WWII, replaced as a purpose-built museum, then bombed again, this time in 1993 by the mafia, who also targeted other cultural institutions, including the Uffizi Galleries in Florence .
PAC during an exhibition by the Iranian photographer and film-maker Shirin Neshat
The present, three-level building is ideal for staging large scale exhibitions by leading Italian and international artists, who over the years have included Shirin Neshat, Laurie Anderson, Duane Hanson, Andres Serrano, Richard Long, Marina Abramovic and Yayoi Kusama.
Out in the southern Largo Isarco district, the Prada Foundation is spread over a former distillery complex augmented by three new structures by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas (Kunsthal in Rotterdan, Casa de Musica in Porto). It follows the trend in recent years for businesses with large corporate art collections to develop museums, most notably the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris or the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, owned by François-Henri Pinault of Gucci, YSL, Bottega Veneta, etc. The Prada collection includes mostly 20th and 21st century works.
The so-called Haunted House, a four-story building clad in gleaming, 24-carat gold foil, contains two permanent installations: Louise Bourgeois’ Cell (Clothes), which incorporates articles of clothing originally worn by the artist, and a fabric sculpture entitled Single III; and the American sculptor Robert Gober’s Arms and legs wallpaper and a drain-like work with running water, stones, twigs and a glowing, human-like ‘heart’. Another structure, the seven-storey Tower, has spacious rooms for changing exhibitions.
The gleaming Haunted House in the Prada Foundation
In the lively Navigli (Canals) district, the Museo delle Culture (MUDEC) occupies the site of a former steelworks. Designed by the British architect David Chipperfield (Turner Contemporary in Margate, Neues Museum in Berlin, Hepworth Wakefield), the building’s centrepiece is an undulating core towering above visitors like a smoked glass Alvar Aalto wave, with four ‘lobes’ around which the exhibition spaces are arranged. Recent shows have featured studies on Dubuffet, Niki de Saint Phalle, Capa, Rodin, Picasso, Van Gogh and many more.
The picture gallery at the Castello Sforzesco, one of the many museums in the grounds of Sforza Castle, has over 1,500 paintings dating from the 13th to the 18th century, including masterpieces by the likes of Bronzino, Tintoretto and Titian. Just 230 works from the collection are on display at any one time, which makes for a very manageable tour. The Sala delle Asse (Room of Wooden Boards) has expansive murals of mulberry trees and vegetation by Leonardo da Vinci painted in 1498 for his patron Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan.
