Description
The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum is a gentleman's house in the center of Milan, furnished in the late 1800s like a Lombard Renaissance palace and left just as it was. It is among the best-preserved house museums in Europe: a journey into the 1400s, seen through 19th-century eyes.
What makes it special is the whole. The building, ceilings, friezes, furniture and paintings were conceived as one harmonious whole: not the rooms of a museum, but the rooms of a real home, where the two brothers Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi lived every day.
Among the furnishings you shouldn't miss are the carved wooden Valtellina bed, a genuine piece from the 1400s and 1500s, and the remarkable collection of Renaissance fireplaces, which give character to every room.
On the walls hang paintings from the 1400s and 1500s: the highlight is the Saint Justina by Giovanni Bellini, alongside works by Gentile Bellini, Giampietrino and Lorenzo di Niccolò. The brothers' library is interesting too, with the treatises of Vitruvius and Serlio and the catalogs of European museums: the manuals they used to study every detail.
The two brothers, lawyers from Varedo, enlarged the family palace taking their inspiration from Lombard noble residences. In 1883 they unveiled the facade, then filled every room with antiques, not just as collectors but to truly live among them, like Renaissance lords.
And when an old piece couldn't be found? They had it made again by great craftsmen, so precisely that originals and imitations sit side by side without clashing.
Yet they were not two nostalgics shut up at home. Keen sportsmen, they were pioneers in trying out the novelties of their time, such as the velocipede and the hot-air balloon, and became a reference point for Milanese collectors.
In 1974 the heirs set up a foundation to open the collections to the public; in 1975 the palace was bought by the Lombardy Region, and since 1994 the house has been a museum. It is part of the Milan Historic House Museums network.
What makes it special is the whole. The building, ceilings, friezes, furniture and paintings were conceived as one harmonious whole: not the rooms of a museum, but the rooms of a real home, where the two brothers Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi lived every day.
Among the furnishings you shouldn't miss are the carved wooden Valtellina bed, a genuine piece from the 1400s and 1500s, and the remarkable collection of Renaissance fireplaces, which give character to every room.
On the walls hang paintings from the 1400s and 1500s: the highlight is the Saint Justina by Giovanni Bellini, alongside works by Gentile Bellini, Giampietrino and Lorenzo di Niccolò. The brothers' library is interesting too, with the treatises of Vitruvius and Serlio and the catalogs of European museums: the manuals they used to study every detail.
The two brothers, lawyers from Varedo, enlarged the family palace taking their inspiration from Lombard noble residences. In 1883 they unveiled the facade, then filled every room with antiques, not just as collectors but to truly live among them, like Renaissance lords.
And when an old piece couldn't be found? They had it made again by great craftsmen, so precisely that originals and imitations sit side by side without clashing.
Yet they were not two nostalgics shut up at home. Keen sportsmen, they were pioneers in trying out the novelties of their time, such as the velocipede and the hot-air balloon, and became a reference point for Milanese collectors.
In 1974 the heirs set up a foundation to open the collections to the public; in 1975 the palace was bought by the Lombardy Region, and since 1994 the house has been a museum. It is part of the Milan Historic House Museums network.