The location for the gallery was not chosen by chance: the Baroque palace complex at that time housed the Milan Academy of Fine Arts.
Long before the gallery appeared, there was a monastery of the Humiliates and a Gothic church of Santa Maria on this site. Today, almost only ruins remain of the monastery and the church.
has existed in Milan since the 18th century.
It arose by royal decree, when Maria Theresa of Austria ordered the opening of an art gallery in one of the city’s palaces, built in the 16th century.
The Pinacoteca di Brera gallery