Description
The Palazzo Reale is the large building to the right of the Duomo's facade, where Milan was governed for centuries. Today it is one of the city's most important exhibition venues: neoclassical rooms that host art, design and fashion, from Monet to Picasso.
The city's government sat here from the Middle Ages: the Visconti, the Sforza, Spanish and Austrian governors, then Napoleon, who made it the palace of Viceroy Eugène, and finally the Savoy. Since 1919 the palace has belonged to the State.
Its neoclassical face is the work of Giuseppe Piermarini, the same architect as the Teatro alla Scala, who renovated it in the 1770s. His grand staircase still gives an idea of the court's parties.
The most important room is the Sala delle Cariatidi (Hall of the Caryatids), on the main floor: a ballroom measuring 46 by 17 meters, named after Gaetano Callani's caryatids. It is the most significant room to have survived the bombings of 1943.
Also don't miss the Theresian and neoclassical rooms, with their original furnishings put back together, and the rooms of the Appartamento di Riserva, which show how the Habsburg court lived in 1837.
In 1953 Picasso brought his Guernica here, the painting against the bombs, and hung it in the Sala delle Cariatidi itself, still scarred by the war. The worst, though, had not been the bombs: after 1943 the roof had stood open to the sky for years.
The palace also has a close tie to La Scala. The court theater was here, and in 1771 young Mozart's opera "Ascanio in Alba" was staged at the Palazzo Reale. When the theater burned down in 1776, it was decided to rebuild it elsewhere: that is how La Scala was born.
The palace is also the hub of a cultural district with the Rotonda della Besana, the Palazzo della Ragione and the Arengario, home of the Museo del Novecento: exhibitions of painting, sculpture, fashion and design, including the 2009 one for the hundredth anniversary of Futurism.
The city's government sat here from the Middle Ages: the Visconti, the Sforza, Spanish and Austrian governors, then Napoleon, who made it the palace of Viceroy Eugène, and finally the Savoy. Since 1919 the palace has belonged to the State.
Its neoclassical face is the work of Giuseppe Piermarini, the same architect as the Teatro alla Scala, who renovated it in the 1770s. His grand staircase still gives an idea of the court's parties.
The most important room is the Sala delle Cariatidi (Hall of the Caryatids), on the main floor: a ballroom measuring 46 by 17 meters, named after Gaetano Callani's caryatids. It is the most significant room to have survived the bombings of 1943.
Also don't miss the Theresian and neoclassical rooms, with their original furnishings put back together, and the rooms of the Appartamento di Riserva, which show how the Habsburg court lived in 1837.
In 1953 Picasso brought his Guernica here, the painting against the bombs, and hung it in the Sala delle Cariatidi itself, still scarred by the war. The worst, though, had not been the bombs: after 1943 the roof had stood open to the sky for years.
The palace also has a close tie to La Scala. The court theater was here, and in 1771 young Mozart's opera "Ascanio in Alba" was staged at the Palazzo Reale. When the theater burned down in 1776, it was decided to rebuild it elsewhere: that is how La Scala was born.
The palace is also the hub of a cultural district with the Rotonda della Besana, the Palazzo della Ragione and the Arengario, home of the Museo del Novecento: exhibitions of painting, sculpture, fashion and design, including the 2009 one for the hundredth anniversary of Futurism.