There is plenty of art displayed on the walls of Milan's museums. But many unsung treasures can also be found in the city's house or studio galleries. Here are five of our favorites.
Pictured: Museo Poldi Pezzoli – Courtesy of Vaclav Sedy
Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano
Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano is a 1920s apartment that shows visitors how a couple of cultured, mid-century collectors displayed their art at home. Antonio Boschi and Marieda Di Stefano were well-off rather than rich: He was an engineer for the tire firm Pirelli, she was a talented ceramicist. But they had the taste and instinct to make up for their lack of funds, and on one occasion even sold their car in order to buy a particularly sought-after work. On Boschi's death in 1988, the apartment was left to the city of Milan on condition that the collection—spanning 40 years from the early 1920s, and featuring artists of the caliber of Giorgio De Chirico, Mario Sironi, and Lucio Fontana—was to be kept intact in its original setting.
Open Tuesdays through Sundays 10 am to 6 pm.
Pictured: Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano – Courtesy of Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano
Studio Museo Achille Castiglioni
Think of an iconic Italian lamp from the 1960s and '70s and chances are Achille Castiglioni had something to do with it. The Arco lamp, for example, was designed by Achille and his brother Pier Giorgio in 1962. A few years after Castiglioni's death in 2002 the great architect-designer's attractively cluttered Milanese house-studio on central Piazza Castello was opened to the public. As often as not, the tours of Studio Museo Achille Castiglioni are led by Achille's widow Irma or daughter Giovanna, which gives the whole experience a delightfully informal slant. Scale drawings, models, and photos are crammed into drawers and shelves and litter every surface, but a more profound insight into the creative mind comes via the objects that Castiglioni used to collect for inspiration, from an empty capers' jar to the bicycle seat that inspired one of his earliest designs, the Sella stool for Zanotta.
Guided tours Tuesdays through Saturdays 10 am, 11 am, and noon. Ring ahead to book one of the three daily guided tours, 39 02 805 3606.
Pictured: Studio Museo Achille Castiglioni – Courtesy of Foundation Achille Castiglioni
Villa Necchi Campiglio
The Necchi Campiglio family were the Singers of Italy, amassing a small fortune thanks to their near monopoly on the domestic sewing machine market in the first half of the 20th century. Having bought a plot of land in the green and leafy millionaires' row of Via Mozart, Angelo Campiglio, his young wife Gigina Necchi, and her sister Nedda commissioned society architect Piero Portaluppi to build them a house that reflected their social status. The result is Villa Necchi Campiglio, a fascinating property that stands on the cusp between Art Deco ornament and a new spirit of rationalism. The interiors, partly refashioned in the 1940s and 50s by Tommaso Buzzi, transports visitors into a mid-century world of monied ease that rated quality over showiness—a world evoked in the film I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton, which is mostly set in the villa and garden. Artworks by Tiepolo, Morandi, and others adorn the walls. Today the villa is owned and run by Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI), an Italian architectural heritage association.
Open Wednesdays through Sundays 10 am to 6 pm.
Pictured: Villa Necchi Campiglio – Courtesy of Giorgio Majno, Fotografo
Museo Poldi Pezzoli
The grand city center palazzo of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli was conceived as a museum as soon as its owner came of age in the 1840s. A cultured aristocrat, Poldi Pozzuoli gave center stage to art rather than his own creature comforts. He even let the works in his growing collection determine the design of his suite of rooms, which chart a range of styles from Gothic to Mannerist to Baroque. He began as a collector of antique weaponry; other passions on display in the absorbing house-museum (left to the city in 1879) include clocks, Islamic metalwork, ceramics, rugs, Etruscan jewelry, and Flemish tapestries. But it's the paintings that most visitors come for: Italian Renaissance masterpieces such as Giovanni Bellini's Pietà, Piero della Francesca's San Nicolò and perhaps the museum's most famous work, the enchantingly perky teenage bride of Piero del Pollaiolo's Portrait of a Young Woman.
Open Mondays, Wednesdays through Sundays 10 am to 6 pm.
Pictured: Museo Poldi Pezzoli – Courtesy of Museo Poldi Pezzoli
Museo Bagatti Valsecchi
In the heart of the fashion district, just off boutique-lined Via Montenapoleone, is an intriguing historical curio Museo Bagatti Valsecchi. Brothers Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi were monied aristocrats who pushed the prevailing late 19th-century fashion for antiquarianism to the limit. Not only did they collect Renaissance art, they had skilled local craftsmen transform their centro storico palazzo in Via Santo Spirito into a perfect replica of a 16th-century Lombard nobleman's residence. Paintings by Bellini and Giampietrino, antique marble fireplaces, and wall friezes blend perfectly into the Bagatti brother's palazzo. They even had their workmen turn a Renaissance fountain into a bathtub, complete with running hot and cold water—cutting-edge technology for the time.
Open Tuesdays through Sundays 1 pm to 5.45 pm.
Pictured: Museo Bagatti Valsecchi – Courtesy of Museo Bagatti Valsecchi
5 house museums concealed behind the city's fashionista façade