Pinacoteca di Brera

The Pinacoteca di Brera is Milan's great public art gallery and the best place in the city to understand Italian painting. It occupies the upper floor of the Palazzo di Brera, a former Jesuit college that also houses the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, the Braidense National Library and an astronomical observatory. The collection grew rapidly in the Napoleonic era, when works were brought here from churches and convents across northern Italy, and that origin explains its many large altarpieces.

Highlights come thick and fast. Andrea Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ, with its startling foreshortened body, is one of the best-known paintings in Italy. Nearby are Piero della Francesca's Montefeltro altarpiece, Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin of 1504, Giovanni Bellini's Pietà, Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus of 1606 and works by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. Francesco Hayez's The Kiss, painted around 1859, is a popular favourite and a symbol of the Risorgimento. Glass-walled restoration workshops let you watch conservators at work.

The Grande Brera project has extended the museum into the nearby Palazzo Citterio, which opened in 2024 with modern and 20th-century collections, and behind the palace lies the small Brera Botanical Garden, a quiet place to sit after a visit.

The gallery opens from Tuesday to Sunday and is closed on Mondays, with last entry well before closing. Reservations are required, so book online before you go. Entry is free on the first Sunday of each month, also with a reservation. Allow two to three hours. The main stairs lead up from the arcaded courtyard, where Canova's bronze statue of Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker stands.

The museum suits art lovers above all, but the layout is clear and the rooms are rarely as crowded as the big galleries of Florence or Rome. The Brera district around it is full of small streets, galleries, cafés and restaurants, so it is easy to combine a visit with lunch, an aperitivo or a walk through the area's narrow streets. If you only have a morning, focus on the Renaissance rooms and the Mantegna, then add the Hayez on the way out. The nearest metro stops are Lanza on M2 and Montenapoleone on M3, each about five to ten minutes' walk away.