Milan for Art Lovers

When it comes to the sheer wealth of Renaissance masterpieces, Milan plays understudy to Florence but can claim The Last Supper, one of the world’s most iconic works of art. The mural of Leonardo da Vinci fame lies in the modest refectory of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie) near Sempione Park (Parco Sempione) and Sforza Castle (Castello Sforzesco). A warning for spontaneous travelers: It’s almost impossible to see the mural without reservations, no matter the time of day or year. To ensure you see da Vinci’s piece de resistance, prebook a tour and skip the lines.

The Brera Art Gallery (Pinacoteca di Brera) is likely the most popular art museum in Milan, a mid-sized space with a sizable collection of paintings by (mostly) Italian masters from the 13th to the 20th centuries and a cache of modern drawings. When you visit, leave enough time to explore the surrounding Brera neighborhood—the erstwhile haunt of artists, writers, and bohemians—and Brera Academy, the fine art school that shares Palazzo Brera with the museum. Even better, after viewing the art, amble through the small botanical gardens behind the palazzo.

The contemporary art and culture institution Fondazione Prada lies outside Milan’s city center in front of the Porta Romana train station, worlds away from ostentatious palazzi and galleries. The museum comprises the renovated remains of a gin distillery and dreamy cutting-edge spaces, such as a “haunted house” wrapped in gold leaf. Seeing these incongruous structures (by Italian standards, anyway) is enough to make visiting worthwhile—and inside, you’ll find industrial spaces featuring some of the most contemporary art in Milan, enriched by film screenings, performances, and other cultural events.

Still farther from the city center than Fondazione Prada, Pirelli Hangarbicocca is a non-profit institution and experimental art center housed in a hangar-like, repurposed Pirelli tire factory in the Bicocca district, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from Piazza del Duomo. It’s all international art here; admission requires booking but is free.

The Milan art scene often marries the old and new, so visiting a church or two (besides the Duomo) is good practice to see the artistic treasures they’ve sheltered for centuries. San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore, sometimes called the “Sistine Chapel of Milan,” is one such church. While it isn’t quite as popular as Santa Maria delle Grazie nearby, it holds behind a modest facade marvelous High Renaissance-era murals by Bernardino Luini and other Lombardian artists. Step inside the church, and you’ll see that rich colors cover the church pillars, walls, and ceilings. Next door, in the ex-convent of the monastery, lies Milan’s Civic Archaeological Museum.

Mudec—short for ”Museo delle Culture,” or Museum of Culture—is among Milan’s newest museums. Housed in the industrial spaces of a former power plant in the trendy Zona Tortona neighborhood, the museum aims to serve as a gathering place for world cultures, in part by featuring what the museum calls its “civic ethnographic collections,” five rooms with art objects from American, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Exhibits are like anthropological lessons accompanied by international art on topics such as the history of Chinese immigration to Milan. Mixed in with the scholarly lessons are visiting exhibits from heavy hitters such as Frida Khlao, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, and others.

In 2015, Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani opened this fashion art museum in the defunct granary of an international conglomerate and called it “silos” in honor of the building’s former purpose, the storage of food, which is, in his estimation, as essential to life as clothing. In a city that puts Italian fashion on the map, this museum documents the superstar designer’s collaboration with other artists and almost 50 years of his haute couture, with hundreds of garments and accessories organized under the themes of “voyage,” echoing the inspiration he’s taken from cultures worldwide, and “glamor”—which speaks for itself.

The Giò Marconi Gallery is proof that Italy remains a center of artistic creation long after the Renaissance had its heyday. The art gallery just outside Porta Venezia in Milan’s historic center is the scion of Studio Marconi 17, a space for young experimental artists founded by the namesake gallerist and his father, and displays avant-garde contemporary art from Italy and abroad. If you’re looking for the most forward-looking of Milan’s art galleries—there are more than a few—Giò Marconi is a great place to start.

Milan’s living artisanal traditions are primarily in shoemaking and typography, with the latter being the domain of working artists. Near Porta Romana train station, on unassuming Via Tagliamento, the diminutive Fratelli Bonvivi shop keeps Milanese printmaking traditions alive by trading fine stationery and traditional letterpress prints. Inside, you can see original printing machinery as it existed more than a century ago, shop for prints, art books, and graphic designs by local illustrators, and check out a collection of vintage Italian typewriters. If you have an hour, consider taking an on-site letterpress workshop.

Ascend the futuristic spiral ramp that connects the Duomo metro station with the Museum of the 20th Century (Museo del Novecento), and you’ll find Milan’s greatest collection of 20th-century Italian art. Although this museum inside the Palazzo dell'Arengario, a former seat of Fascist power, has a small cache of works by foreign artists, most of the art is Italian and arranged chronologically from the early 20th century through the Futurism and Pop Art movements. Two pieces might stop you in your tracks: first, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo's beautiful neo-impressionist oil painting of striking workers, The Fourth Estate, and Umberto Boccioni’s Futurist sculpture, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.