Pinacoteca di Brera
Via Brera, 28 (distance from the hotel: 3 km)
Napoleon's ill-gotten gains form one of the world's best Italian Renaissance art collections, Pinacoteca di Brera, housed in a fine Renaissance palace in Brera. The 38 rooms are brimming with 13th-20th-century artworks by Veronese, Mantegna, Bellini, Carpaccio, and more.
When Napoleon was busy running Europe, he decided that Milan was the place for an imperial capital (after Paris of course). To this end, he ordered his armies to loot the areas of French-occupied Italy and bring back to Milan the finest works of art that they could find.
From 1799-1815 Napoleon built on the original collection, which comprised the Hapsburg's bequest of a small collection of paintings and sculptures to Milan's Accademia. Paintings came flooding in thick and fast.
Masterpieces to look out for include Veronese's Supper in the House of Simon, for which he was nearly killed by the Inquisition, Mantegna's The Dead Christ, which depicts a prostrate Christ viewed from the soles of his feet and Carpaccio's The Presentation of the Virgin.
As for non-Italians, there are pictures by El Greco, van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt. Modern Italian painters include Modigliani.
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Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology
Via San Vittore, 21 (distance from the hotel: 2,5 km)
With its twenty-eight sections, from information technology to engines to astronomy, some 40 000 square metres of displays, and a massive 15 000 pieces in its collection, the “Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology" in Milan is one of the most important technical and scientific museums in the world. The museum is made up of three separate buildings: the Monumental Building, which is a former Olivetan monastery whose construction dates back to the early sixteenth century; the Rail Transport Building and the Air&Sea Transport Building.
The Museum illustrates the history of science and technology down to modern times. Of particular interest are the Leonardo da Vinci Gallery; the department of physics, with apparatus used by Galileo, Newton and Volta and the departments of optics, acoustics, telegraphy, transport, shipping, railroads, flying, metallurgy, motor vehicles, clocks and watches, and timber. There is also a library and reading room (film presentations).
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Poldi Pezzoli
Via Manzoni, 12 (distance from the hotel: 3km)
In 1850 the art collector Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli began the decoration of his own apartment within the family palace.
The result was a series of rooms inspired to various artistic and decorative styles of the past (Baroque, Medieval period, Early Renaissance, Rococo), designed and decorated by some of the most innovative artists of the time.
When Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli's house-museum was opened to the public in 1881 for the Milan National Exhibition, it was visited by thousands of people.
From then on, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum became a model for other house-museum projects, including those of the American Isabella Stewart Gardner, Antonio Borgogna from Vercelli (Italy), and the French Jacquemart – André.
Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli's first passion was arms and ancient armour.Later, during his journeys across Europe, Gian Giacomo came across the new museums in London and Paris, which combined fine arts with decorative arts.This discovery inspired him to include a variety of precious objects alongside paintings and sculptures in his collections, mainly from the Renaissance period and the Venetian Eighteenth century.
The range of objects collected by Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli was wide enough to include enamels and jewellery from the Medieval age and the Renaissance, carpets, tapestries, jewels, glass and porcelains.
Gian Giacomo was assisted in his collecting decisions and purchases by a handful of renowed connoisseurs, counsellors and antiquaries.
Among these, worth noting are the famous art historian Giovanni Morelli and the painter and professor of the Brera Academy Giuseppe Bertini, who, after Gian Giacomo's death, became the first director of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum and remarkably increased its painting and textile collections.
Thanks to generous bequests by private collectors, the museum's collection has been enriched by the acquisition of paintings, mechanical clocks and sundials, laces and embroideries.
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Bagatti Valsecchi Museum
Via Santo Spirito, 10 (distance from the hotel: 4km)
Housed in Palazzo Bagatti Valsecchi, in the heart of Milan, is one of the finest museum-homes in Europe. It is now a private foundation, set up by the Bagatti Valsecchi heirs to open the family's late 19th century residence and collections of artworks to the public.
Since 1994 it has been possible to visit the house's many fascinating rooms in which the 19th century interiors are embellished by outstanding collections, of Renaissance origin or inspiration: paintings, wood carvings and furnishings, weapons and armour, ceramic and glass wares, artefacts in gold and ivory, decorative metal objects, tapestries.
The museum is also a centre for research, organizing courses, seminars and conferences. Its publications focus on various facets of 19th century culture.
The kind of nineteenth-century culture reflected in the house of Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi was aimed at finding artistic inspiration in the past. This approach, employed in a strictly Neo-Renaissance style by the two noble brothers, is part of a larger phenomenon called "historicism" that pervaded a great part of nineteenth-century culture in Italy and abroad. Nevertheless, information of quality on Italy or Milan in the nineteenth-century is not always easy to find in the internet. With this portal, the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum wants to offer to art lovers and scholars a useful research tool about this century truly crucial in the history of Italy and Milan, in order to favor an understanding of their contribution and role in international culture.
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Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna
Via Palestro, 12 (distance from the hotel: 4,5 km)
The building was designed by architect Leopold Pollak upon request by the Count Barbiano di Belgioioso in 1790. Over the years, it became the official residence of Napoleon III and of Marshall Radetzky. The main façade, in romantic style, overlooks the gardens. In the gallery you'll find a vast collection of paintings and sculptures from 19th-Century Italy. Included are neo-classical works by Appiani and Canova, Romantic works by Hayez, and works from the late 19th century by Cremona
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