Galleria d’Arte Moderna presso Villa Reale

Via Palestro, 16
M1 Palestro/M3 Turati
Bus 61, 94
BikeMi 59 - Palestro 2
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The Royal Villa was built 1790-1796 in the what was then the Porta Orientale district, and is now known as Porta Venezia. Ludovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso commissioned Giuseppe Piermarini, who named his pupil Leopoldo Pollack chief architect. Featuring a neoclassical style and a rational layout in terms of volume, with a central structure flanked by two wings, the villa boasts bas-reliefs and mythological statues. Past residents of note include Gioacchino Murat, viceroy to Eugenio Beauharnais, Augusta Amalia of Bavaria, General Radetsky and Napoleon III. Visitors especially admire the English garden and its natural landscape, where vegetation does not completely conceal ruins of the past. The villa was put under public domain during the unification of 19th-century Italy, when it became headquarters for the city’s modern art collections.
The Galleria d’Arte Moderna was inaugurated in 1921. City collections of 18th-century art had been built up thanks to material bequeathed and donated by Milanese collectors, including the substantial collection obtained from the Brera Academy in 1902. With its 2,000 paintings and 600 sculptures, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna has continued its focus on the 19th century and the modernity it signaled, from the French and Industrial Revolutions to the dawn of the 20th century. This journey through modern art concludes with Pellizza da Volpedo’s Quarto stato.