13 Museums In Milan, Italy: Guide To The Cultural And Historical Treasures

Milan is a variety of things, including the second-largest city in Italy and likely the one with the fastest growth rate; one of the world’s fashion capitals; and a spectacle of stunning architecture made up of skyscrapers and centuries-old palazzos. With that, it is impossible to ignore Milan’s reputation as a center for the arts.

When envisioning a trip to Milan, one might not immediately picture themselves strolling through museums due to its upscale runways and skyscrapers covered in greenery. However, the city has a lot to offer to people with all different kinds of artistic interests, and the treasures they contain are definitely worth a visit.

Here is a list of the twelve museums in Milan that you simply must visit. You may also check some of the other things you can do in Milan, Italy.

List of the Best Museums in Milan, Italy:

1. Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci

📍Address: Via San Vittore, 21, 20123 Milano MI, Italy
🎫 Find Tickets – Book in Advance: Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci Museum Entry
🌟 Ratings: 4.5 / 5

The largest technical-scientific museum in Italy, the National Museum of Science and Technology “Leonardo da Vinci” is situated in the heart of Milan and has a rich history of exceptional examples of the industrial transformation of our nation.

Leonardo da Vinci, a symbol of the enduring relationship between technological and artistic culture, is honored by having the Museum bear his name. This value and the connection to the city of Milan are intended to be highlighted by the tribute to Leonardo.

It has a total area of over 40,000 square meters and is divided into three major complexes: the monumental building, the railway pavilion, and the aeronautical pavilion, 23,000 of which are interactive areas and collections with more than 10,000 objects.

The Museum conducts extensive informal education in addition to research and the conservation of scientific and technological heritage. It is presented to the general public as a freely accessible space for learning, experiencing, understanding, and inspiration.

2. Milan Natural History Museum

📍Address: Corso Venezia, 55, 20121 Milano MI, Italy

In 1838, Giuseppe de Cristoforis gave all of his collections to the city of Milan, which led to the establishment of what is now known as the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale (Milan Natural History Museum). Today, the museum can be found in the area of Porta Venezia, specifically in the Intro Montanelli Garden, which dates back to the 19th century.

Mineralogy, paleontology, natural history, and invertebrate and vertebrate zoology are the five sub-divisions that make up the gallery’s organizational structure. Discover an impressive collection of fossils, bones, and minerals sourced from all corners of the globe. In addition to this, you will be able to investigate the beginnings of humankind and monitor the development of humans’ relationships with their surroundings over the course of many years.

The museum features the most comprehensive collection of life-size dioramas depicting all of Italy’s ecosystems that have ever been assembled.

3. Milan Modern Art Gallery

📍Address: Via Palestro, 16, 20121 Milano MI, Italy

The Galleria d’Arte Moderna Milano, also known as the Milan Modern Art Gallery, is a modern art museum in Milan, Lombardy, in northern Italy. The Villa Reale, on Via Palestro 16 and across from the Public Gardens, serves as its home. Italian and European works from the 18th to the 20th centuries make up the collection.

Francesco Hayez, Andrea Appiani, Giovanni Segantini, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Daniele Ranzoni, and Gaetano Previati are just a few of the significant artists present, as they are unquestionably protagonists of Art History for both Milan and Italy. This makes Milan’s Modern Art Gallery of international stature.

Their creations capture the evolution of art in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the trend that started at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and gradually spread internationally. Over the years, these masterpieces have enriched the Gallery’s art heritage and validated its core mission of sustaining the spread of culture thanks to donations from some prominent families and 20th-century art collectors.

Works by Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Giovanni Fattori, and other significant figures in the Italian 20th-century art scene are on display in the Villa’s halls for visitors to admire.

4. Museo Poldi Pezzoli

📍Address: Via Alessandro Manzoni, 12, 20121 Milano MI, Italy
🎫 Find Tickets – Book in Advance: Museo Poldi Pezzoli Entrance Ticket
🌟 Ratings: 4.5 / 5

The private collection of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli once occupied this museum of 19th-century art. He left the Brera Academy his palace and all of the artwork after he passed away in 1879. The museum was established in 1881 but suffered significant damage during World War II, requiring extensive reconstruction before it could reopen in 1951.

Some of the finest Renaissance art collections in Italy are on display in this elegant patrician home, which also contains valuable Persian tapestries, rare porcelain objects, and glassworks.

The armor exhibit, a majestic hall filled with a wide variety of weapons, is one of the museum’s highlights. But this isn’t the only exceptional work. This collection, though small, is extremely valuable. Along with works by Pietro della Francesca, Guard, and Mantegna, you’ll find Botticelli’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ with Saints and Pollaiolo’s Ritratto di Giovane Dama (Portrait of a Young Woman).

5. Museum of the Risorgimento

📍Address: Via Borgonuovo, 23, 20121 Milano MI, Italy

The Milanese Palazzo Moriggia, which houses the Museum of the Risorgimento, was built in the eighteenth century. It contains a collection of artifacts and objects that depict the history of Italian unification from Napoleon’s first campaign in Italy in 1796 to the annexation of Rome in 1870. Milan’s involvement in this process has received particular attention, especially the 1848 uprising against Austrian rule known as the Five Days of Milan.

The First Italian Campaign is the topic of the first room, which features artifacts connected to the key incidents. In its exhibits, the second room presents a much wider time scale. Here, there are a plethora of documents from the consular era juxtaposed with “Hundred Days”-related items. The entire third room is devoted to Napoleon’s coronation, which took place on May 26, 1805, in the Duomo. The case housing the ceremonial items is dominated by a bust of Napoleon.

The documents on the Risorgimento that were gathered for the Turin Exhibition in 1884 and later moved to the showroom at Milan’s Public Gardens served as the foundation for the Museum of the Risorgimento. Later, the exhibit was moved to the Rocchetta rooms at Sforza Castle. The museum was momentarily relocated to Casa Manzoni’s estate in 1943 as a result of the castle being bombarded during World War II. It was finally housed inside the Moriggia Palace in 1951, where it is still located today.

6. Leonardo da Vinci’s Vineyard

📍Address: Corso Magenta, 65, 20123 Milano MI, Italy
🎫 Find Tickets – Book in Advance: Leonardo’s Vineyard Museum Entry Ticket
🌟 Ratings: 4.3 / 5

La Vigna di Leonardo, Leonardo’s Vineyard, is a luxurious private residence that offers a rare chance to experience the Milanese Renaissance. It is hidden away in the lush gardens of Casa degli Atellani.

Currently, one of the city’s most intriguing locations is Leonardo’s Vineyard. Leonardo grows the Malvasia variety of Candia Aromatica grapes, and it has been possible to determine the caliber of these grapes through a careful and scientific examination of the vineyard’s remnants.

The Zodiac Hall, which gets its name from the zodiac signs painted on the lunettes, the Sala del Luini, an Italian painter who painted portraits of numerous Sforza family members, the Sala dello Scalone, and Ettore Conti’s study are all inside the house. Ettore Conti was an engineer, senator, the first president of Agip, and the president of Confindustria.

The public can visit the Vigna di Leonardo from Tuesday through Sunday from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Tours last 30 minutes and take guests through the gardens and Casa degli Atellani.

7. Museo d’Arte e Scienza

📍Address: Via Quintino Sella, 4, 20121 Milano MI, Italy
🎫 Find Tickets – Book in Advance: Free Entry with Milan Pass City Card
🌟 Ratings: 4.5 / 5

Gottfried Matthaes, the company’s founder, left the sector in 1990 to concentrate on a meaningful issue of paramount importance: the identification of art forgery. He acquired two floors of Palazzo Bonacossa in the same year in order to establish the MAS – Museum of Art and Science in Milan.

The Museum is home to esteemed Buddhist and African art collections as well as an engaging tour of authentic art and antiques. Each room focuses on a fundamental theme, including paintings on canvas and wood, excavated pottery, antique furniture, amber, and ivory, silver, antique prints, books, tapestries, and carpets. Each topic is explained, along with the traits that can distinguish an authentic object from a fake.

Numerous “test stations” with microscopes, magnifying glasses, and special lamps are also available for visitors to use in order to conduct actual tests. There is a specific itinerary just for kids as part of the museum’s educational offerings. The exhibition concluded with two Leonardo Da Vinci-themed rooms.

8. Museo del Profumo

📍Address: Via Messina, 55, 20154 Milano MI, Italy

Museo del Profumo or Perfume Museum of Milan is a unique museum in Italy that is devoted to the history, design, and art of the 20th century allows visitors to admire the works of the greatest glass artists who created perfumery-related objects during that time, including Julien Viard, Carlo Scarpa, René Lalique, and Fulvio Bianconi. This museum also tells the intriguing tale of Chanel N°5 and all those essences whose fates have long been shrouded in mystery.

Discover the most well-known scents from the first half of the 20th century at Museo del Profumo, which Gabriele D’Annunzio made famous around the world with his own poetic genius.

A museum where the stories associated with the great perfumers are given ample room, and where the artistic ideals of many foreign and Italian perfume houses from the 20th century—once lauded for their refinement, charm, and creativity—are revived.

The Cultural Center for Studies on Period Perfumery, The Perfume Museum, organizes meetings, conferences, exhibitions, guided tours, explorations of the topic of perfume, training sessions, and workshops.

9. Memoriale della Shoah

📍Address: Piazza Edmond Jacob Safra, 1, 20125 Milano MI, Italy

Deep inside the Central Station of Milan, Italy, on a lower level than the main tracks, is where you’ll find the city’s Shoah Memorial. Deportees from the San Vittore prison were loaded onto livestock cars here.

It serves as a metaphor for the transportation of Jews and other oppressed groups to concentration or death camps. In order to prevent past atrocities from ever fading into obscurity, it serves as a center for memory and awareness as well as a multipurpose venue for conferences, seminars, and exhibitions.

Most importantly, it serves as a forum for cross-cultural communication and exchange, educating younger generations on how to get past linguistic, cultural, and social barriers to prevent future instances of the extreme brutality seen in the twentieth century—the Shoah being the absolute lowest point in human depravity.

The area where the Memorial is located is a portion of a sizable underground train yard with twenty-four parallel tracks that were once used by mail wagons. It is divided into two levels: the sublevel and the ground floor and the mezzanine. Twenty RSHA trains made up of livestock cars loaded with thousands of prisoners, departed from these tracks between the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1945.

10. The Royal Villa (Villa Reale di Monza)

📍Address: Viale Brianza, 1, 20900 Monza MB, Italy
🎫 Find Tickets – Book in Advance: Monza Guided City Tour Full Day Trip From Milan
🌟 Ratings: 5 / 5

One of the most exquisite royal residences in Europe, the Royal Villa of Monza has a garden that is bigger than Versailles’. After reviewing its past, you will discover all the information required on how and when to visit the Royal Villa and its gardens in this post.

The history of one of the most well-known and frequently visited neoclassical masterpieces is of the Royal Palace of Monza. The Habsburgs commissioned Giuseppe Piermarini, an imperial architect, to complete the project in just three years. It was created in perfect harmony with the magnificent surroundings.

Currently owned by the Municipality of Monza, the Lombardy Region, and the State, the Royal Villa of Monza has been opened to the public after undergoing extensive renovations to the structure and grounds. This allows locals and visitors to take advantage of the special building, which frequently also serves as a venue for significant exhibitions.

The Royal Villa of Monza has emerged as one of Lombardy’s most significant cultural and museum hubs following the renovations that have restored it to its former splendor (and beyond). The interiors, its magnificent gardens, and the vast park that surrounds it are all accessible to the general public in various ways.

11. The Pinacoteca di Brera

📍Address: Via Brera, 28, 20121 Milano MI, Italy
🎫 Find Tickets – Book in Advance: The Secrets of Brera:District & Pinacoteca Guided Tour
🌟 Ratings: 5 / 5

The Pinacoteca di Brera has been Milan’s most prestigious gallery since Napoleon’s time, when he intended the museum to house all the finest artwork from French-conquered lands. Its collection of paintings spans from 14th Century classics to the avant-garde.

In addition to housing the museum itself and the Brera Fine Arts Academy today, the structure is known as Palazzo Brera. Visitors and students mix in the palazzo’s expansive courtyard, which is surrounded by statues (including one of Napoleon himself).

The majority of the artwork in the museum is Italian, but there are also pieces by Flemish artists like Rubens and Van Dyck. Large-scale works of art by masters like Caravaggio and Raphael, as well as lesser-known but incredibly impressive works like “Lamentation of Christ” by Lombardian painter Andrea Mantegna, are displayed in expansive halls. These works are bursting with color and Baroque drama. The “Supper at Emmaus” by Caravaggio and “Discovery of the Body of St. Mark” by Tintoretto are two highlights of the museum.

12. Ambrosian Library (Biblioteca Ambrosiana)

📍Address: Piazza Pio XI, 2, 20123 Milano MI, Italy
🎫 Find Tickets – Book in Advance: Pinacoteca Ambrosiana Tickets & Tour for Families
🌟 Ratings: 4.6 / 5

Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, is honored by the historical library known as Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The building was built in 1603 to house Cardinal Federico Borromeo’s collection of 15,000 manuscripts and printed books. The cardinal gave the library his entire collection of artwork when it was established in 1609, including his paintings and drawings.

Codex Atlanticus, a twelve-volume collection of Leonardo da Vinci drawings and manuscripts produced between 1478 and 1519, was purchased by the library not long after the cardinal passed away. This is the most comprehensive collection of Leonardo’s writings, covering virtually every field of human knowledge, including philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, botany, and mechanics.

The renowned Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, an art gallery housed within the library, is home to works by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Raffaello, including the life-size, pencil and carbon sketch of “The School of Athens” by the latter, a full-color final version of which is on display in the Vatican.

Islamic manuscripts, an 11th-century diwan of poets, the earliest copy of the “Kitab Sibawahaihi,” a complete collection of manuscripts from the Benedictine monastery of Bobbio (1606), and manuscripts by Vincenzo Pinelli of Padua, totaling more than 800 items, including the renowned Ilias Picta, are among the other significant acquisitions here (Ambrosian Iliad).

13. Sforza Castle

📍Address: Piazza Castello, 20121 Milano MI, Italy
🎫 Find Tickets – Book in Advance: Sforza Castle and Michelangelo’s Pietà Rondanini Tour
🌟 Ratings: 4.9 / 5

Sforza Castle is an iconic red brick landmark in Milan. The medieval castle is known as the fortification made in the 15th Century by the hailed ruler, Duke of Milan, and military man, Francesco Sforza, and it was later expanded by his successors.

The castle has played an important role in Milan’s history and has been used for a variety of purposes over the years, including as a military fortress, a residence for the ruling family, and a museum. Today, the castle houses several museums and art collections, including the Museum of Ancient Art, the Museum of Musical Instruments, and the Museum of Applied Arts.

One of the most famous works of art housed in the Sforza Castle is Michelangelo’s sculpture of Pietà Rondanini, which was completed just a few days before the artist’s death in 1564. Other notable works of art include frescoes by Leonardo da Vinci and Bramante.

In addition to its art collections, the Sforza Castle is also known for its impressive architecture and expansive grounds, which include several gardens and courtyards. Visitors can explore the castle’s various museums and collections, as well as take in the stunning views of Milan from the castle’s rooftop terrace.

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