The treasures of Brera Palace

Welcome to the Palazzo di Brera (Brera Palace). Not everyone knows that the Pinacoteca (the Brera Art Gallery), the Astronomical Observatory, the Botanical Garden, the Braidense National Library, the Academy of Fine Arts and more are located here, in via Brera 28! The different realities that have their home here have ONE STORY IN COMMON. Let’s discover it!
Enter through the grand entrance at via Brera 28.

The courtyard, a double order of columns, Doric and Ionic, was built in the 17th century according to a project by Francesco Maria Richini, but the history of this building has origins far beyond that time. Before 1200 this courtyard was a meadow, a Braida, on the borders of the medieval city of Milan. Even today this late Latin word echoes in the name of the neighborhood, known as Brera.
On this land the convent of the order of the Umiliati (the Humiliated) and Santa Maria di Brera were built. The church of Santa Maria di Brera is no longer visible because it has been adapted and used as an exhibition space for the Pinacoteca and classrooms of the Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1571 the palace was entrusted to the Jesuits and renovated to house a school when it assumed its present appearance. From that moment, at Brera, literature, the sciences and the arts were studied.
In 1773 the Jesuit college became the property of the State and the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria transformed it into the location of some of the most important cultural institutions of the city: the Braidense Library, the Astronomical Observatory, The Botanical Garden and the Academy of Fine Arts, to which, at the behest of Napoleon, the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Lombard Institute Academy of Sciences and Letters were added. Giuseppe Piermarini, one of the protagonists of Neoclassicism in Italy and architect of the Teatro alla Scala, was in charge of the design of the works. He was responsible for the renovation of the library, the entrance on Via Brera, and the completion of the courtyard, at the center of which was placed only later Canova’s statue of Napoleon as Mars the peacemaker.

The statue replicates an original marble, now preserved in London, and represents Napoleon Bonaparte as the war god Mars as a peacemaker. In one hand he holds the scepter and in the other the globe surmounted by the winged Victory: this small part of the statue is a copy, since in 1978 the original was stolen.
It was commissioned by Prince Eugene of Beauharnais in 1807. The bronze cannons of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome were used to make it and two castings were needed to obtain the final version. It was brought to Milan in 1812, but only in 1859 the Milanese patriots decided to place it in the center of the courtyard of honor, on a pedestal decorated with eagles and friezes, the year the city was freed from Austrian domination, thanks also to the alliance with the French.
In 2014 a temporary workshop was created in situ to restore the statue.
Inside the Pinacoteca, in the center of the room 14, one of the plaster versions can be admired.

Website:
https://istitutolombardo.it

Throughout the 19th century the balconies, courtyards, halls and corridors were decorated with sculptures to commemorate artists, benefactors, men of culture and science who had contributed to the prestige of the institutions in the Palace and the city of Milan.

Walking along the collonade that surrounds the courtyard you pass in front of the meeting room of the Lombard Institute Academy of Sciences and Letters, to the right of the entrance gate, and on the opposite side, in front of the offices of the Friends of Brera Association.
In the Napoleonic Hall of the Academy are preserved and exhibited the casts of the frieze of the Parthenon, commissioned by Canova for the most important academies in Italy. This room is behind one of the doors overlooking the courtyard of honor and can only be visited during exhibitions and events.

The Association is one of the oldest in Milan and has always worked for the knowledge, protection and enhancement of Brera and the Milanese Museums. Founded in 1926, suppressed during the Fascism and reconstituted in 1949, it promotes conferences and meetings, visits and educational activities; it was also the first institution to organize activities for children in the Pinacoteca with Bruno Munari. Through sponsorships, fundraising and donations it continues to support Brera and other cultural institutions in the city.

It was the Friends of Brera who bought the Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio and donated it to the Pinacoteca. This happened in 1939 at the behest of Ettore Modigliani, who was dismissed from his role as superintendent in 1938 because he was Jewish. The State contributed about 9000 lire, while much of the cost (about 500,000 lire, corresponding to 435,000 euros today) was covered by some patrons of the Association, Mario and Aldo Crespi and Paolo Gerli.
Unfortunately, on the eve of the exhibition, the Association was suppressed by the Fascist government and replaced by the Action Center for the Arts.

Website Amici di Brera

Next to the offices of the Friends of Brera is Bottega Brera, the bookshop of the Pinacoteca: inside you can increase your knowledge of the museum and its collections thanks to the books and catalogs on sale. There is also a wide selection of objects that you won’t find in any other museum, which will remain a memory of your visit to Brera as real souvenirs of the museum experience.

Walking along this side of the courtyard, you will find the two monumental staircases which lead to the Pinacoteca. Between them, you can see a fountain. Entering one of the doors near it you reach the corridors of the Academy of Fine Arts. On both sides, some of the classrooms in which the lessons are still held.

Website Bottega di Brera

The Brera Academy of Fine Arts was founded in 1776 to fulfill the function, according to the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, of distancing the teaching of Fine Arts from artisans and private artists, putting it under “public surveillance and public judgment”.
In 1801 Giuseppe Bossi, a brilliant scholar and artist of the neoclassical age, was appointed secretary: he was responsible for a powerful impulse to the life of the Academy that, during the Napoleonic period, experienced a moment of extraordinary development, finally seeing the establishment of the annual exhibition, its own library and an art gallery. The latter was made up of works that are still part of the Brera collections. The institution thus became the engine of the Milanese art system.
We will come back several times to the corridors of the Academy of Fine Arts because its classrooms are scattered throughout the building.

Enter through the door to the left and continue down the corridor in front of you. Just ahead to your right is the office of the Direction of the Academy; on the sides of the door you can admire two groups of plaster statues that reproduce the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici in the New Sacristy in San Lorenzo in Florence.
They are part of the collections of the Academy that, like every art school, used them for the exercise of its students to copy the great masters. For most of the 19th century the “Gallery of Statues” occupied the rooms of the Pinacoteca overlooking Via Brera, which now house the paintings of the 17th century.

Further on, in the same aisle on the left you will find the grand staircase that leads to the Braidense Library.

Website Accademia di belle arti di Brera

The Braidense Library contains extraordinary treasures that tell Milan’s and our literary history, including the various autographs and printed versions of The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni and the very first editions of the texts by Ugo Foscolo. In 1770 Maria Theresa of Austria, thinking the Ambrosiana Library, opened in 1609 and “rich of manuscripts” but not of “printed books”, decided to assign to public use the library of Count Carlo Pertusati, who had collected about 24,000 volumes during his travels in Italy and abroad. In 1773, the Pertusati collection was transferred to the Palazzo di Brera and added to that of the Jesuits, which with the dissolution of the order had become the property of the State, in order to create the initial nucleus of the Braidense Library. Since then other acquisitions and donations continue to enrich its collection, and thanks to its role as library of record for the province of Milan, it is guaranteed to remain contemporary.
It is also interesting that the Braidense, in 1885, was the second library in the world, after New York, to be provided with an electrical lighting system. The bulbs were precious goods at that time: therefore, until the middle of the 20th century, “Rubata alla Biblioteca di Brera” (stolen from the Braidense Library) could be read on every bulb. An original way to advise against theft!

Website Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense

Go down the staircase, turn left and looking at the plaster sculpture of Achilles supporting Ajax dying, turn left again. You will go out in a courtyard, called “della Pesa” (Of the Weigh-station): in front of you, one of the entrances of the building, in via Fiori Oscuri 4.
Here you will find a portal with an iron gate that opens onto the courtyard of Landriani Palace, where the offices and the Library of the Lombard Institute Academy of Sciences and Letters are located.

Please note that the courtyard entrance may be closed on weekends. In this case you can reach it along the corridor to the right of the sculpture; at the columns turn left and open the glass door that you will see in front of you. The gravel path leads to the right to the Botanical Garden; along it to the left instead, following the high wall that delimits it, you will arrive at the courtyard of the Pesa.

The Lombard Institute Academy of Sciences and Letters has been housed since 1810 in the Palazzo di Brera, which is still the location of the meeting room, in the courtyard of honour, and the archive. It was founded by Napoleon with headquarters first in Bologna and then in Milan.
The Institute has operated without interruption since its beginning, with the task of collecting discoveries and perfecting the arts and sciences.
It organizes conferences and meetings during which research and original works are presented, discussed and approved for the press. There are also cycles of lectures dedicated to literary and scientific latest topics, to connect the public with highly qualified experts and learn about the state of studies in various fields of knowledge.
Among its historical members are various personalities from the world of culture: scientists such as Alessandro Volta and Giovanni Schiaparelli, astronomer and director of the Brera Observatory; writers such as Vincenzo Monti, Alessandro Manzoni, Giosuè Carducci, Pope Pius XI and Eugenio Montale; artists such as Antonio Canova and Andrea Appiani, who had a fundamental role in the history of the Pinacoteca.
Among the most recent are Albert Einstein, Giulio Natta, Renato Dulbecco, Carlo Rubbia and many other Italians and foreigners. The Institute has an important library of 500,000 volumes and an archive full of manuscript papers of members and associates including those of Alessandro Volta, of which 6,000 manuscripts are preserved.

Website Istituto Lombardo

Now take the walkway and go back in through to the right entrance. Open the door after the three steps. To your right is a staircase leading to the Astronomical Observatory.
Climb the stairs and go beyond the landing, to the top: you will find a large atrium, with large astronomical photos and, on the left, the entrance to the Observatory.
Accessibility: the Observatory does not have an internal lift: if you cannot use the staircase, you can consult the general information found at the beginning of the audioguide.

Website Museo Astronomico di Brera

The Brera Astronomical Observatory is part of the INAF, the National Institute of Astrophysics, and is the oldest scientific institution in Milan.
The Observatory has two locations, one in the Palazzo di Brera and one in Merate, near Lecco, opened in the 1920s.
It was founded by the Jesuits around 1760, when Father Ruggero Boscovich designed and built the first observatory, that is, an elevated place, suitable for astronomical observations. Since then, the study of the cosmos has never been interrupted. The Observatory today ranks among the best Italian research institutes and can boast collaborations with national and international institutes and agencies, such as NASA and ESA, and the most prestigious observatories operating in the Canaries with the Galileo National Telescope, in Chile and Hawaii.
The Observatory has always been committed to the communication of scientific knowledge to the general public. It deals with planets, stars, black holes and dark energy, but also about galaxies, gamma-ray bursts, distant structures in space and time.
To access the studies of modern astronomers you pass through the Astronomical Museum, which houses the instruments used by the Observatory’s scientists over the centuries, supplemented by some others belonging to the University of Milan. These instruments retrace the results obtained by the astronomers of the Observatory, such as Giovanni Schiaparelli, who wanted the dome, still in use, and who produced detailed maps of Mars with its telescope, still in its original position.

WebsiteBrera Astronomical Observatory

From the Astronomical Museum, go down the stairs and immediately turn left. Exit and walk to the right the gravel path, always called the Strettone (from the Italian stretto, narrow). At the end you will find the entrance to the Botanical Garden.
Alternatively you can reach the garden from via Privata Fratelli Gabba 10, by means of an access ramp, but you will have to leave the building. The paths inside the garden are in gravel and clay.

In 1774-75 the Palace garden – since the 1300s belonging to the Humiliati and since the 1500s to the Jesuits – was established as a Botanical Garden for higher education in pharmacy and medicine. Today it still has this function, but it is also a true open-air museum, where many activities are held for the public and more than a thousand different species of plants can be admired: some have curiously shaped fruits and leaves, others are centuries-old trees. The Garden preserves the original structure with two elliptical basins among dense flowerbeds that house species of native flora, as well as medicinal, Mediterranean, tinctorial, and textile plants. Important tall specimens stand out in the arboretum, including the Garden’s two patriarchs, two 2 1/2-century-old Ginkgo bilobas. In autumn their leaves turn a deep yellow and, falling to the ground, form a soft carpet on which you can walk. Throughout the year you can stroll among the flowerbeds and enjoy the silence of this green corner in the center of the city, which offers a different and interesting face each season.

Walk through the gravel path again and enter the building.
Turn immediately left. The wide corridor is closed by a glass wall: on the right is the entrance to the Ricordi Archive.

Website ortibotanici.unimi.it

The Archive was founded in 1808 and it has been here, as part of the Braidense Library, since 2004. It is the historical memory of the music publisher Ricordi: it collects booklets, scores, letters from composers, librettists and singers, sketches and figurines, vintage photos and Art Nouveau posters. It is now owned and managed by the Bertelsmann foundation.
It represents one of the most important private music collections in the world: the immortal works of geniuses, including Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, and the daring experiments of contemporary composers, are still present in the Archive.
The documents can be consulted, upon reservation, in the Manzoni Reading Room of the Braidense Library.

Website archivioricordi.com

Go back. On the same side of the corridor, a little further, there is a passage. Now get out! You are now in the space known as the Courtyard of the Magnolia: from here, at the bottom on the left, you can access the engraving classrooms of the Academy, also visible from inside the Botanical Garden.
The magnolia partially conceals the base of what was the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria di Brera.
If you look up you can also see the flower-shaped dome of the Astronomical Observatory.

When you come back to the corridor, keep left and turn left again to continue walking in the corridors of the Academy. Many famous painters have learned the secrets of art in these classrooms, where even today young artists work on their creations.

Right here, on the right, a plaque marks the study of Francesco Hayez, a painting teacher and director of the Academy of Fine Arts, one of the greatest Italian artists of the 19th century. If you visit the Pinacoteca upstairs, among the various works of the master, you can admire one of his most famous paintings: The Kiss.

Continue walking along the corridor: you are skirting on the left the spaces that belonged to the 14th century church of Santa Maria di Brera, currently the Academy’s scenography classrooms. Inside (unfortunately not open to the public) are structural and decorative architectural details, as well as traces of frescoes; you will find two of these by Foppa detached and displayed in the Pinacoteca.

Continue straight ahead through the entrance.
On your left you can see a large bas-relief with the Coronation of Napoleon as King of Italy, designed to decorate the Arch of Peace on Corso Sempione.
If you turn around, you will find that you have just passed through the Baroque portal that belonged to the Church of San Sepolcro.
And here you are now in the Atrio dei Gesuiti, or “Consagra space” so called since the sculpture Muraglia Cangrande (Cangrande Wall) created in 1977 by Pietro Consagra, one of the most prestigious exponents of international abstractionism, was placed there in 2013.

From the large iron gate you can see Piazzetta Brera (“piazzetta” means small square). In the center, in the middle of the flowerbed, a monument by Francesco Barzaghi of 1890 portrays the painter Francesco Hayez: one of the reliefs of the base is a reproduction of his famous Kiss.
Where you are now the facade of the church of Santa Maria di Brera once stood.

If you retrace your steps, in the corridor beyond the portal on the left you will find other sculptures from the Academy collections: a reproduction of the Farnese Hercules, one of the Barberini Faun; on the right side a standing Minerva, and a representation of the goddess Flora. The originals of these works are marble sculptures dating from the 4th and the 1st centuries B.C.

Go back to the courtyard of honor of the Palace with the statue of Napoleon.
Choose which of the two stairways to take to get to the first floor: on one side you will find the monument to the jurist and law scholar Cesare Beccaria, made by Pompeo Marchesi, on the other a statue dedicated to the poet Giuseppe Parini, by Gaetano Monti.

If the Pinacoteca is open but for any reason you cannot use the double staircase, from its base pass through the door and turn left. In the courtyard you have reached, keep left: at the end you will find the reception from which you can access the art gallery with the elevator.
Once at the top of the stairs, you will see a glass door, the so-called Porta Gregotti.

Above the door stands the Brera clock, built to regulate the entrance and exit of the students of the Jesuit college. Its historical importance began with the reform of 1786, with which the method of measuring time already in use in the countries of Northern Europe and still used today was also adopted in Italy.
It consists in dividing the day into two equal parts, each one of 12 hours: from noon, when the Sun passes on the meridian, to midnight, and from the first hour of the morning, when the new day begins, until 12:00.
After the Unification of Italy, given the service that this clock provided to the city of Milan in collaboration with the Astronomical Observatory, the decision was made to entrust the determination of national average time to the Brera Observatory.
This lasted until August 8, 1943, when, during the first of a series of violent bombings that struck the city, the roofs of the Brera Palace were almost completely destroyed and almost all the sophisticated instruments for measuring time were irretrievably damaged.
The clock, however, continued to function regularly until 1957, when Carlo Milani, a mechanic at the Brera Observatory, retired.
In 2003 the ARASS (Association for the restoration of ancient scientific instruments, based in the courtyard of honor of the Brera Palace), completed the functional restoration of the clock, and even today ARASS takes care of it, periodically adjusting its mechanism.

The door between the two stairways seems to be the natural entrance to the Pinacoteca but, in fact, it was designed during the Austrian period to access the Maria Theresa Hall of the Library, which you can see beyond the second glass door.
The main room of the Library is dedicated to the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, depicted in a portrait hanging at the entrance, painted by Agostino Comerio.
Also used for exhibitions and cultural events it is furnished with a walnut shelf in two orders, with a continuous gallery, designed by the architect Giuseppe Piermarini.
The large 18th century drop-shaped chandeliers, in Bohemian crystal, have been rebuilt with the remains of those that illuminated the Caryatid Hall of the Royal Palace, destroyed during the bombings of the Second World War.
Only in the 1980s the superintendent Carlo Bertelli, together with the architect Vittorio Gregotti, from whom the door takes its name, thought it could also be the main entrance to the Pinacoteca. To this purpose, Gregotti designed the burnished metal frame that still characterizes it today.
The opening of the door as the main entrance was only realized on 13 October 2016, under the director of the Pinacoteca and Library James Bradburne.

Looking at the bronze sculpture Il Miracolo, Cavallo e cavaliere (The miracle, horse and rider) by Marino Marini and turning right, at the end you will find the access door to the Caffè Fernanda.

The café is named after Brera’s visionary director Fernanda Wittgens, who is credited with reopening the museum in 1950, completely restored by Piero Portaluppi after the bombings of 1943. On display here are several works of art from the Brera collection, The Conversion of the Duke of Aquitaine by Pietro Damini (1619) and The Three Graces, executed by Bertel Thorvaldsen in 1826 in honor of Andrea Appiani.

Website caffefernanda.com

The museum was founded as a collection of exemplary works, intended for the training of the students of the Academy. In 1809, after having increased its patrimony with the requisitions in suppressed churches and monasteries, it became a national art gallery according to Napoleon Bonaparte’s wishes.
Today it exhibits more than 500 works by Italian artists who lived from 1200 until the last century. Here there are masterpieces such as Mantegna’s Dead Christ, Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin, Piero della Francesca’s Montefeltro Altarpiece, Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, Hayez’s Kiss.
If you want to visit the Pinacoteca, the Education team of the museum have created special itineraries available for free on this platform.

Website pinacotecabrera.org

Leaving the Pinacoteca, walking along the accessible parts of the loggia will give you the opportunity to notice once again the many sculptures that adorn the walls of the Palace.
Statues, busts, tombstones and monuments are dedicated to the illustrious Milanese who have scattered its history: professors of the Academy, members of the Lombard Institute Academy of Sciences and Letters and anyone who had “considerably increased the furnishings or endowment”, that means who made donations.
At the end of the 19th century, given the number of requests and the large number of sculptures, a limit had to be set: initially it was imposed that the portrayed person had died for at least five years, but after just three decades, the years to wait became twenty!

Before you go, you can take a last look at the statue of Napoleon: he helped make the Palazzo di Brera the center of culture, knowledge and arts whose secrets you can discover today.
Thank you and come back soon!