Milan: on the hount for art treasures

A promenade in the historical centre of Milan, visiting its museums and its art treasures, showing one of the most beautiful Italian patrimonies. Castello Sforzesco and Pinacoteca di Brera, the science museum dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci and the ones about the history of Milan and Lombardia, modern art in the Cimac, the theatre museum of the mythical Scala and the film museum. It's impossible to get bored!

You may love or hate Milan. Indifference is not one of the feelings aroused by the moral and economic capital of Northern Italy, symbol city of dynamism and of the most assaulting economy. Capital of work, elegance, sport and politics, of stock exchange and commuters, of managers and top models. But in spite of this Milan can offer the traveller looking for art and science treasures many attractive surprises: we will visit some famous and some hidden museums all of them close to the city centre.

Castello Sforzesco (Sforza Castle) hosts important museums and cultural institutions. Its nucleus was founded in the XVI century by the Visconti family it was then turned into ducal palace by the Sforza family. Nowadays forms are due to Beltrami's restoration of 1893.

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The Scala theatre, real opera temple, was built by Piermarini on request of the Asburgo regnants between 1776 and 1778 with a neoclassic facade. It raises on the area of the former church di S. Maria della Scala from which it derives its name. The Scala Theatre Museum, where the most important steps of theatre and opera history are shown, is host in an adjoining building known as "Casino Ricordi": in fact it has been years long the seat of Ricordi, one of the major melodrama editors in Milan.

We are close to the heart of the city: its Duomo, the largest and most spectacular example of Italian Gothic, that was started in 1386 for will of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. At the one end of the square we see Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace), now hosting the Town Museum for Contemporary Arts, a wide overview on the main artistical movements of the XX century. A hundred works of this collection are now exhibited at Permanente, while the wonderful Jucker collection is temporarely exposed in the Gallery for Modern Arts.

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On the other side of the city, in a IX century palace inside the Gardens of Porta Venezia, lays the Town Museum for Natural History. It shows how life began and explains the relationship between organisms and their environment, helping us in answering our questions often in an amusing way. Dioramas, stuffed animals, skeletons, plastic models and graphic documents make this one the most important Italian collections.

Our last stop is the Film Museum. It belongs to the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana and is set in Palazzo Dugnani, adjoining to the gardens of Porta Venezia. There are collected instruments, photos, documents, scene sketches, posters and objets that belonged to directors and actors. Here you may see the first rudimentary machineries used in '700 to project images; the 1895 Lumière's apparatus that conventionally marks the birth of cinema; relics of soundless cinema stars and autographs of popular directors. The museum also owns an interesting Historical Film Archive, one of the main in Europe both for old and modern films, and it projects its reviews at Spazio Oberdan.

Viaggio a Milano

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