The history of the Palace that today houses the famous Academy of Fine Arts and the Brera Art Gallery
Today’s Via Brera in medieval times was nothing more than fields and meadows, in what was once called ‘Braida’ from which the name Brera derives. We were therefore outside the city walls.
On 7 November 1178, a plot of land measuring 12 perches and eight planks, located in the braida, was purchased for some religious monks who intended to live there, the Umiliati.
The monastery of Brera was the mother house of the order and was flanked by the church of Santa Maria in Brera, of which no traces remain today as it was incorporated into the building that exists today.
The religious order was abolished and then abandoned the building in 1571 with the papal bull of Pope Pius V.
The building was then given to the Jesuits for the construction of an educational institution, the College of the Society of Jesus.
Undoubtedly, a larger building was needed and the work was entrusted to the architect Martino Bassi, but he died in the same year as the work began (1591) and consequently slowed down.
Then in 1615 Francesco Maria Richini, a very famous architect of the time, was entrusted with the work.
However, his project was not approved until 1651.
In 1773, the Society of Jesus was suppressed and the building, still unfinished, was reallocated by the Austrian government, Maria Theresa of Austria, to the Palace of Sciences and Arts.
The work was completed by Giuseppe Piermarini between 1778 and 1795.
In addition to housing the Palatine Schools, other institutions such as:
. The Brera Library that was founded thanks to the union of the Brera and San Fedele libraries, to which other donations were added.
. The garden, formerly belonging to the Jesuits, which was transformed into a botanical garden in 1774.
. The Academy of Fine Arts that was founded in 1776, endowing it with an annual contribution of 10,000 lire from suppressed ecclesiastical property.
. A public clock was also built in 1786 to serve as a reference for the other clocks in Milan.
The institutions continued to grow in the 19th century during the Napoleonic era.
In 1810 it was moved to Milan to the Brera Palace under the name of the Institute of Sciences National Institute, Letters and Arts (founded in Bologna in 1802).
In 1838 it was split into the Imperial Regio Istituto Lombardo di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti and the Istituto veneto.
In 1882 came the Brera Art Gallery under the direction of Giuseppe Bertini.
