The Diocesan Museum of Milan and his collections

History of Diocesan Museum
The Diocesan Museum, been born as emanation of Ambrosiana Diocese, preserves and promotes the Diocese’s precious artistic assets, valorizing the historical and religious importance.
The Diocesan Museum is located in the suggestive frame of the Saint 'Eustorgio’s Basilica Cloisters. The Cloisters, as we see them today, is all of that remain of ancient and glorious shine of the Dominicans convent.
The first cloister, attached to the Saint 'Eustorgio Basilica, was built around 1229 and for long time it was the fulcrum of convent life, and it owes his actual conformation to a seventeenth-century intervention.
A splendid Renaissance cloister was built in 1413 for initiative of Filippo Maria Visconti but destroyed already in 1526 from clashes between Spanish troops and French.
The second seventeenth-century cloister, for the elegance of his structure, it makes to suppose the intervention of important lombards architects as Carlo Buzzi or Francesco Maria Richini.
Both the cloisters have seriously been damaged and partially destroyed by the 1943 bombardments.

The collections of Diocesan Museum
The collection of the Diocesan Museum includes around 320 works, divided in eleven fundamental sections.
The Museum’s rooms contain a lot of works of Milanese archbishops’ collections (Monti collection, Visconti, Pozzobonelli and the complete Erba Odescalchi collection) and those coming from the Diocese, from the VI to the XIX century.
At this nucleus the Golden Funds, for the more Tuscan works of the XIV and XV century, the section devoted to Sant'Ambrose, the goldsmith’s wares, the cycle of the Holy Sacrament Arciconfraternita’s cloths and, finally, the “Way of the Cross” by Gaetano Previati are added.
The Museum organizes tour with guide, didactic laboratories, and besides it entertains very interesting exhibitions.