cinalia

Milan · Piazza del Duomo

Museo del Novecento

Italian twentieth-century art in a fascist-era palace, with a window onto the cathedral

Museum Milan, Piazza del Duomo€€€

The top-floor Lucio Fontana neon, with the Duomo filling the window behind it

The Palazzo dell'Arengario on the cathedral square was built under Mussolini and reopened in 2010 as the city's museum of the twentieth century, entered by a spiral ramp that quotes the Guggenheim without embarrassment.

The collection is the best account of Italian modernism anywhere: futurism, metaphysical painting, arte povera and a top-floor room with a Fontana neon spiral and a window framing the Duomo, which is the best view in Milan that does not require climbing anything.

The detail

Good to know

Opened
2010
Building
Palazzo dell'Arengario, 1930s
Focus
Italian 20th-century art
View
Top floor, over the Duomo