The incredible new art centre 50 years in the making

Italy’s cultural trove has been attracting aesthete and art-curious tourists from across the world since young aristocrats first embarked on their Grand Tours in the 17th century.

Rome, Venice and Florence and their respective concentrations of riches have been the particular honeypots swarmed by art enthusiasts and list-tickers alike.

The inaugural exhibition at Palazzo Citterio.Credit: Alamy

But Milan, the northern capital mostly known for fashion, design and finance, is staking its claim to being a centre of art – with the culmination of a plan 50 years in the making.

The Grande Brera project, a strategy to bring together several separate cultural institutions into a conglomerate like the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, has just been completed.

The dream was conceived more than half a century ago, but various factors, many of them political, saw it stagnate.

The early December launch of Palazzo Citterio as a modern art museum was the final piece of the Grande Brera puzzle to fall into place.

The opening of Palazzo Citterio as part of the Grande Brera project.Credit: Alamy

The Grande Brera comprises Pinacoteca di Brera being the main gallery, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera or Brera Academy, the botanical garden Orto Botanico di Brera and the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense or Braidense National Library, as well as linking the management of the Basilica delle Santa Maria delle Grazie, where Leonardo da Vinci’s delicate The Last Supper is located.

The Pinacoteca di Brera, with its origins dating to Napoleon who wanted to create a “little Louvre” to display all the works seized by the French army (on the footprint of an art institution already established by Maria Teresa of Austria), has long held what is considered one of the world’s most significant collections, with important works by the likes of Raphael, Tintoretto and Caravaggio in its auspices, but has lacked enough space to display it to its full advantage. Palazzo Citterio, is now home to a modern art collection that grew through major donations in the 1970s and 1980s.

A journalist gets a first look at the centre.Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

The wider Brera neighbourhood in which Grande Brera is situated is an artsy enclave at the centre of the city, featuring cobbled streets, upmarket restaurants and shops, and boutique hotels such as Bulgari Hotel Milano, which was the first of the luxury brand’s properties.

The Grande Brera is a 15-minute walk from Milan’s famed cathedral, il Duomo di Milano.

See pinacotecabrera.org/en/grande-brera/