A visit to the Museo del Duomo is almost a prelude to a visit to the cathedral: a quiet, silent place where sculptures can be admired from close up, enjoying the colours of the marble and the details of unique works of art which had been placed on the monument, often at dizzying heights.

Although it tells a story unfolding over six hundred years, the museum is quite young and has been the protagonist in the course of its history of three important exhibitions. Always located in the rooms on the ground floor of the Royal Palace, the museum was inaugurated in 1953 with an installation by Ugo Nebbia, in 1974 it was curated by Ernesto Brivio and it finally reopened in 2013 with an installation by Guido Canali. The museum has grown and enriched its rooms and collections thanks to the painstaking work of replacing damaged art works which for various reasons and particularly after the vicissitudes of war were taken from the cathedral.

The tour opens with the Treasure, owned by the Metropolitan Chapter. It then continues by telling the history of the Duomo through the centuries: statues, stained-glass windows, paintings, tapestries, architectural models, terracottas and plaster casts. All of them are original elements taken from the Monument.
What emerges is the fact that the cathedral was a collective enterprise built as a result of slow and patient work, for centuries, with the contribution of famous and not famous artists, of workshops with different styles that harmonised to create with their mastery the cathedral’s decorations.

Here is why Museo del Duomo is so important. It is a living place, a place to discover to learn the history of the monument and the work of the Veneranda Fabbrica.

The Museum maintains its freshness and tells the history of Milan cathedral also through the constant activity of its Educational Services, with schools, families and guided tours, through exhibitions in the renovated Gian Galeazzo Room and activities of in-depth analysis and study.