Palazzo Brera

Palazzo Brera in Milan, Italy began as a medieval monastic complex established on land owned by the consul Guercio da Baggio in the 12th century and came under the Humiliati around 1178; its long development spans medieval ecclesiastical uses, a major early modern rebuilding campaign begun in the early 1600s, and a later transformation into a centre for culture and science. The site first acquired a church, Santa Maria in Brera, built between 1180 and 1229, and that church received Gothic decoration in the mid-14th century, underlining its importance to the city in the later Middle Ages.

In the late 16th century the religious community that occupied the complex was dissolved by papal decision on 7 February 1571, and at the request of Charles Borromeo with papal approval the monastery was converted into a college of the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit school expanded rapidly, reaching about 3,000 students and prompting plans for a much larger building. A major construction campaign for the present palace began in 1627, was interrupted by the plague of 1630, resumed in 1651, and continued after the original planner’s death until the later 17th century.

The suppression of the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV on 21 July 1773 transferred the palace into Habsburg hands. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria established several cultural and scientific institutions here: she founded the Brera Library in 1773, ordered the former Jesuit herb garden to be enlarged into the Brera Botanical Garden in 1774, and created the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1776. The Jesuit observatory had already been established at the site around 1764. Late-18th-century completion work finished the inner courtyard and the entrance on Via Brera by about 1780.

During the Napoleonic reorganization of northern Italy the church of Santa Maria in Brera was closed in 1806, its façade removed, and the church interior reconfigured so that the upper level housed the new picture gallery and the lower level held a collection of ancient sculpture; the Pinacoteca di Brera was formally established in that year. In 1810 Napoleon’s Istituto Nazionale was relocated to the palace as an Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, a body that later became the Lombard Institute of Sciences and Letters. A bronze cast of Antonio Canova’s Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker was placed in the principal courtyard in 1859.

In the 20th century the palace suffered the disruptions of both world wars: its rooms were closed during World War I and artworks were moved after the 1917 Italian defeat at Caporetto; paintings were again evacuated at the outset of World War II. The building was struck by bombing on 7–8 August 1943, then rebuilt after the conflict and reopened in 1950. Since 1773 the complex has hosted a concentration of libraries, academies, gardens, an observatory and laboratories; from 2013 the Lombard Historical Society has its seat within the Brera Library.