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Built in the late 18th century and altered over the years until the early 20th century, the four historic Milanese palazzi between via Manzoni and Piazza della Scala were once patrician residences and the former headquarters of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, founded in 1894 to sustain Italy’s industrial development. Today they have been renovated and turned into an art museum open to the public. The collections of the Cariplo Foundation and the Intesa San Paolo bank contain all the works of art belonging to the banks now part of the group. Today they form the backbone of a permanent exhibition of 19th century art that stretches from Antonio Canova, to Romanticism and the naturalist Lombardy movement through to Futurism. The breadth of the current collection will also allow in-depth temporary exhibitions on specific aspects of the Italian Novecento.
Architectural renovation, by Michele De Lucchi (Ediltecno Restauri as main contractor), was complex and involved several stages, the first a thorough survey of the buildings’ features. The huge staterooms typical of such buildings have been retained. They are now exhibition spaces as well as areas onto which the circulation routes converge and where visitors can pause. Restoration of key environments was accompanied by the addition of state-of-the-art museum technology and plant to ensure the right lighting and HVAC conditions. The restoration and reconversion programme also had to tackle the difficult task of unifying four buildings to create a meaningful museum circuit. This has been achieved with great sensitivity and ingenuity, matching the environments to the different art works and creating educational spaces and public catering facilities, these latter with an independent entrance to the museum. Typically, the architecture of these former residences veers between grandiose reception halls and more domestic quarters. This feature has been exploited to mark out the timeline...
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