An event in the heart of the Brera District, Milan’s most charming and picturesque neighborhood, visiting the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan’s flagship art institution par excellence. Impossible not to know it, at least by reputation. The Brera District is a melting pot of histories, trends and identities that overlap, contaminate and mingle. Just as it happens in the Palazzo Brera complex, where the history of Italian art from every era, every region and every school dialogues with the suggestions of architecture, literature, botany and astronomy. A hybrid context of intact and unchanging elegance, capable of conveying style and prestige to any event, whether it be an exclusive , closed-door visit to the Brera Picture Gallery, followed by a Milanese dinner in one of the many eateries located among the cobbled streets of the Brera District, or a cocktail reception or a refined dinner right inside the Cortile d’onore of the Brera Palace, under the bronze gaze of the sculpture of Napoleon in the guise of Mars the Peacemaker. Above all, perhaps the most characteristic feature of Brera is that it never ceases to amaze.
The thousand faces of the Brera Art Gallery of Milan
Palazzo Brera is a diamond in the rough with multi-facets. Participants, walking exclusively through the spacious and silent rooms of the Brera Picture Gallery after closing time, are guided along unexpected and personalized itineraries, discovering the many faces of beauty: They admire, at last at close quarters, the masterpieces of the great Italian masters; they dwell on the details of everyday life and the symbolism of still lifes; they follow the evolution over time of facial expressions, poses and fashions in period portraits of men and women; they savor with their eyes the dialogue between food and art. Inside the silent Brera Palace, participants also discover with incredulous amazement the reserved splendor of theBotanical Garden, a blooming oasis of greenery and peace in Milan’s historic center; the antiquity of the Braidense National Library, with its walls entirely covered with books and the marvelous Bohemian crystal chandeliers hanging from the frescoed ceiling; and the scientific excellence of the historic 18th-century Brera Astronomical Observatory.
The thousand identities of the Brera District
On the other hand, the Brera District itself is a woman with an iridescent face, which seems to change expression depending on the perspective from which it is viewed. It has the face of old Milan, with its beautiful old houses, wooden ceilings, narrow cobblestone and cobblestone streets. It has the green and liquid face of the Milanese suburbs, when the waters of the Navigli still passed here. It has the face of silence, among small historic stores, green gardens and ancient palaces. It has the face of Milanese baroque of Palazzo Citterio and Palazzo Cusani. It has the reassuring face of the Palazzo del Corriere della Sera, with its Art Nouveau facade. It has the romantic and bohemian face of artists, of color factories and stores for art and antiques, of radical chic clubs, of streets with peculiar names, of the craft market. It has the face of a prostitute from the brothel on Fiori Oscuri Street. It has the sacred face of the Churches of San Marco, Santa Maria del Carmine and San Simpliciano. She has the face of creativity, fashion and design. It has the mysterious face of a fortune teller, of the compounds of the ancient Farmacia Erba, of the fragrances of the perfumery arts.
A thousand guided tours to discover them all
To each nuance of Brera’s identity, a guided tour created according to the client’s preferences: there is the itinerary dedicated to the Brera Design District, among the design and fashion showrooms of the Fuori Salone; there is the itinerary dedicated to the Brera Perfume District, including olfactory experiences and custom fragrance creations within the Quarter’s many niche perfume boutiques; there is the Brera in Red Lights of the brothels, an itinerary that retraces streets and buildings that were once veritable dens of pleasure, and which participants can also rediscover through the stories of the characters who once inhabited them, impersonated by professional actors.