Pinacoteca di Brera

The Pinacoteca di Brera is one of the finest art museums in Italy, and it is never as crowded as it deserves to be. It occupies the upper floor of the Palazzo di Brera, a seventeenth-century Jesuit college that also houses the Academy of Fine Arts, a historic library, an astronomical observatory and a small botanical garden, and its collection was created under Napoleon in the early nineteenth century, largely from paintings taken from churches and convents across northern Italy. That origin gives it a particular strength in Venetian and Lombard painting and in large religious works. You enter through the arcaded courtyard, past Canova's bronze of Napoleon as a nude Mars, and climb to some forty rooms of masterpieces. The roll call is extraordinary: Andrea Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ, with its shocking foreshortened body seen from the feet; Giovanni Bellini's tender Pieta; Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin of 1504, with its perfect domed temple; Piero della Francesca's Brera Madonna, with an ostrich egg hanging from the shell-shaped apse; Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus; Tintoretto's dramatic Finding of the Body of St Mark; and, a favourite with visitors, Francesco Hayez's The Kiss of 1859, the romantic image of the Italian Risorgimento. The gallery is also unusual in showing its own conservation work: a glass-walled restoration laboratory sits in the middle of the route, so you can watch restorers at work. Since late 2024, the museum has also expanded into Palazzo Citterio nearby, part of the Grande Brera project, which shows twentieth-century Italian art.

Tickets and timing: the Pinacoteca is open Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays. Standard tickets are reasonably priced by European standards, and a combined Grande Brera ticket adds Palazzo Citterio. Young EU citizens pay a reduced rate and under-eighteens enter free. On the first Sunday of each month entry is free for everyone, but booking is required and the slots fill quickly. Buying online through the official site or a platform such as Tiqets fixes your time and saves queueing; queues are rarely long, but timed tickets help at weekends. Allow two to three hours to see the main collection properly. Bags larger than a small daypack must be left in the cloakroom.

How to see it: follow the numbered route, but pace yourself, because the best rooms come in clusters. Spend time with the Mantegna, which is displayed low, at the height intended to make you look along the body; then the Bellini and the Venetian rooms; then the central rooms where Raphael and Piero hang near each other, a lesson in Renaissance perspective. Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus and Hayez's Kiss come later. If you have energy left, add Palazzo Citterio for Modigliani, Morandi, Boccioni and other moderns.

Around the gallery: Brera is Milan's most charming neighbourhood, a grid of cobbled lanes, galleries, design shops and restaurants that comes alive for evening aperitivo. The botanical garden behind the palazzo is a free, quiet corner. Via Fiori Chiari and Via Madonnina are the classic lanes for a stroll, and the Sforza Castle and La Scala are each ten minutes away. Pair the gallery with lunch in Brera, then walk on to the Castle or to Corso Como and the skyscrapers of Porta Nuova for a contrast of old and new Milan. If you have a second art day, the Poldi Pezzoli house museum near Via Manzoni and the Ambrosiana near the Duomo complete Milan's trio of great old-master collections.