Palazzo Brera

The Palazzo Brera is another one of the many places in Milan where you can see art under many forms. The Palazzo Brera is located in the Brera neighborhood (which makes sense, right?). Inside, you can find cultural institutions, like the Brera Library, the Astronomic Observatory or the Academy of fine arts.

The building of the Palazzo Brera is quite huge from outside, although the façade is quite basic and random (still, it's a building in Milan so it is not really so basic), so it doesn’t really catch the eye. If you are not looking for it, you might not actually notice it. At first, I actually never saw it when I walked past it like two or three times, until one day I looked up and saw a big “Pinacoteca di Brera” sign and realized that it was there.

The access to the gardens, which is really more of a cloister since it was built on the remains of an ancient monastery, is free and everybody can go there. There are some statues, green spaces and you can also climb the stairs and get a higher view on it.

I really like this place because of the architecture (yes I know, once again), which is very typical of buildings that used to be monasteries with all the arches all around. As you can see on the pictures, they make it look gorgeous to me and give some charm to the place. I also like the huge staircases to go to the higher floor, as well as the statues everywhere.

If you want to enter any of the rooms in which art is exhibited, you actually have to get a ticket at the “biglietteria”. The full-priced ticket costs €10, but there is a reduced-price ticket that costs €7 is you’re an EU citizen between 18 and 25 years old. Here also comes a tip for you: admission is actually free for everybody on the first Sunday of each month. So, if you’re around Milan at this time of the month, you know what to do! I love the idea to make art accessible to absolutely everybody like this, so you just have to make yourself free on that Sunday, go to the Pinacoteca and just enjoy what you see!

My personal favorite exhibition room was the Brera Library. It is so impressive. The room is absolutely huge, with a really high roof, and looks really beautiful with the big chandeliers and the reliefs on the walls, with books on wooden shelves all over. The room also felt really quiet and it was great to enjoy the beauty of it. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of it, but I can tell you it’s definitely worth going to see it; whether you are a book lover or not!

An original feature of the Pinacoteca di Brera is that they have a collection of paintings available for people that are interested in seeing them online. That’s right, you can see the artworks on your computer. I think it’s a good idea to make it accessible to everybody, but I also think the experience is quite different from actually going to the museum and visiting it. You decide if you like it or not! I think it might be very useful if you need to work on one specific artwork, as with this you can see it as many times as you like without paying anything. You can have access to the online collection on the Pinacoteca di Brera website. There is also a virtual tour available, thanks to which you can have a 360° vision of some rooms (kind of the same concept as on Google Maps).

To sum up, the Palazzo Brera is worth visiting if you like seeing pretty things (and I am sure you all do)! It’s open every day of the week, except on Mondays, from 8. 30am until 7. 15pm.

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