The best museums in Milan: prices, hours and free days

Prices, opening hours and free days below were checked on the museums’ official sites on 5 October 2026. Milan’s civic museums raised several prices in May 2026: Sforza Castle now costs €10, not €5.

Milan’s best museums at a glance

Museum	Best for	Adult ticket	Closed	Metro
Pinacoteca di Brera	Italian painting	€20 (booking required)	Mon	Lanza (M2)
Last Supper (Cenacolo Vinciano)	Leonardo’s fresco	€15 (book weeks ahead)	Mon	Conciliazione (M1)
Pinacoteca Ambrosiana	Caravaggio, Leonardo, Raphael	€20	Wed	Duomo, Cordusio (M1)
Sforza Castle museums	Michelangelo, armour, Egyptian art	€10	Mon	Cairoli (M1)
Museo del Novecento	20th-century Italian art	€10	Mon	Duomo (M1, M3)
Science and Technology museum	Families, Leonardo galleries	€13	Mon	Sant’Ambrogio (M2, M4)
Museo Poldi Pezzoli	House museum, Renaissance art	€15	Tue	Montenapoleone (M3)
Museo Bagatti Valsecchi	House museum	€14	Mon, Tue	Montenapoleone (M3)
Gallerie d’Italia	Free under 26	€12	Mon	Duomo (M1, M3)
GAM, Galleria d’Arte Moderna	Modern art, low price	€8	Mon	Palestro (M1)
Fondazione Prada	Contemporary art	€15	Tue	Lodi T.I.B.B. (M3)
Triennale Milano	Design	Building free, design museum €14	Mon	Cadorna (M1, M2)
Mudec	World cultures, big exhibitions	Collection free	Mon	Sant’Agostino (M2)
Pirelli HangarBicocca	Large contemporary installations	Free	Mon to Wed	Ponale (M5), then bus 51

Our guide to getting around on the Milan metro explains the lines and the €2.20 ticket.

Art museums

Pinacoteca di Brera

The Pinacoteca di BreraMap is Milan’s main picture gallery, at Via Brera 28. Your €20 Grande Brera ticket also covers the current exhibitions and Palazzo CitterioMap, and it stays valid on the same day and the following 6 days. You need a reservation on brerabooking.org, or you can buy at the ticket office.

• Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 8:30am to 7:15pm, last entry 6pm. Closed Mondays.
• Discounts: free under 18. The €4 rate for ages 18 to 25 follows EU rules, so most Americans pay €20.
• Free day: the first Sunday of the month, with a reservation.

Our Brera neighborhood guide covers the streets, cafés and shops around the gallery.

The Last Supper

Leonardo’s mural is in the Museo del Cenacolo VincianoMap, the old refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. A ticket costs €15 and gives you 15 minutes in the room, and it sells out weeks ahead. It is closed on Mondays. Read our guide to Last Supper tickets before you book anything else, because your time slot will shape the rest of the day.

Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

The Pinacoteca AmbrosianaMap, at Piazza Pio XI 2, a short walk from the Duomo, holds Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit, Raphael’s preparatory cartoon for the School of Athens, Leonardo’s Portrait of a Musician and original drawings from his Codex Atlanticus.

• Ticket: €20, covering the Pinacoteca and the San Sepolcro crypt. €13 for under 18s and university students, €15 for over 65s. Booking ahead adds €1.50 per ticket.
• Hours: 10am to 6pm every day except Wednesday. The ticket office closes at 5:15pm.
• Time: the museum says a full visit takes about 90 minutes, plus 30 for the crypt.

It is one of the few major museums open on Mondays.

Sforza Castle museums

One €10 ticket covers all the museums inside Sforza CastleMap for the day: Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà, the ancient art and armour collection, the picture gallery, the Egyptian collection and the musical instruments. The museums open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5:30pm (last entry 4:30pm), and the courtyards are free every day from 7am to 7:30pm.

The castle is a civic museum, so it is free on the first Sunday of the month and free for visitors up to 25 on the second Tuesday. Our Sforza Castle guide has the room-by-room plan and the battlement walk.

Museo del Novecento

The Museo del NovecentoMap on Piazza del Duomo shows 20th-century Italian art, from the Futurist rooms of the 1910s to a room for Lucio Fontana. A ticket costs €10 (€5 reduced, free up to 17) and includes the temporary shows.

It opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7:30pm and on Thursdays until 10:30pm, with last entry an hour before closing. That late Thursday makes it the easiest museum to fit after a day of sightseeing around the Duomo.

Gallerie d’Italia and GAM

Gallerie d'ItaliaMap, on Piazza della Scala, costs €12, is free for everyone under 26 and opens Tuesday to Sunday from 9:30am to 7pm. It is next to the La Scala Museum, so the two pair well.

The GAM, Galleria d'Arte ModernaMap, at Via Palestro 16, costs €8, the cheapest ticket among the city’s art museums in this guide. It opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5:30pm, last entry 4:30pm. Its second floor, with the Grassi and Vismara collections, is closed for repairs in autumn 2026. The building is Villa Reale, built in the 1790s and later Napoleon’s residence in Milan; its English garden is in our guide to Milan’s villas.

House museums: Poldi Pezzoli and Bagatti Valsecchi

The Poldi Pezzoli and the Bagatti Valsecchi are two of Milan’s four house museums, a short walk apart near Montenapoleone metro station (M3).

The Museo Poldi PezzoliMap at Via Manzoni 12 shows Piero del Pollaiolo’s Portrait of a Young Woman, along with works by Botticelli and Piero della Francesca.

• Ticket: €15; €13 over 65; €10 for ages 11 to 18 and students up to 26; free up to 10 with parents.
• Hours: 10am to 6pm (last admission 5:30pm). Open on Monday, closed on Tuesday.

The Museo Bagatti ValsecchiMap is at Via Gesù 5, a few minutes away.

• Ticket: €14; €10 for university students and over 65s; €6 for ages 6 to 17; €26 for a family of two adults and two children. The museum recommends booking online.
• Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

If you plan to see both, the Milan House Museums Card (€25, €15 reduced) gives one entry to each of the city’s four house museums, including these two.

Science, design and contemporary art

Science and Technology Museum

The Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da VinciMap, at Via San Vittore 21, is the best choice with children. Its highlights include the Leonardo da Vinci galleries, a space area with a fragment of the Moon and a Vega rocket, the Enrico Toti submarine, the ocean liner Conte Biancamano, locomotives and aircraft.

• Ticket: €13; €8 for ages 3 to 26 and over 75s; free under 3. A visit inside the Toti submarine costs €10 more, needs a booking and is sold only with a museum ticket.
• Hours (from 15 September 2026): Tuesday to Friday 9:30am to 5pm; weekends and holidays 9:30am to 6:30pm; last entry an hour before closing. Closed on Mondays that are not holidays.
• Weekends: the museum warns that you may not get in without an online ticket for a set date and time.

From Milano Centrale, take the green M2 toward Abbiategrasso for six stops to Sant’Ambrogio.

Triennale Milano and Fondazione Prada

The Triennale MilanoMap, Milan’s design museum and exhibition center, is at Viale Alemagna 6, near Cadorna station. Walking into the building is free; the Museo del Design Italiano costs €14 (€2 less online) and some exhibitions are paid. It opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10:30am to 8pm.

The Fondazione PradaMap is a contemporary art center at Largo Isarco 2, by Lodi T.I.B.B. metro station (M3). A €15 ticket (€12 reduced, free under 18, plus €1 if you buy online) is valid for 30 days and also covers the OsservatorioMap gallery inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. It opens 10am to 7pm and closes on Tuesdays. Free guided tours in English run on Mondays at 11am and Saturdays at 3pm.

Mudec and HangarBicocca

The Mudec, Museo delle CultureMap, at Via Tortona 56, has a free permanent collection and paid exhibitions (the Matisse show costs €16). It opens Tuesday to Sunday, 9:30am to 7:30pm, and until 10:30pm on Thursdays.

Pirelli HangarBicoccaMap, at Via Chiese 2 in the north of the city, is my favorite museum in Milan. It fills a former industrial plant with installations too big for any gallery in the center, and Anselm Kiefer’s The Seven Heavenly Palaces, seven concrete towers, stay on permanent display. Entry is free, Thursday to Sunday from 10:30am to 8:30pm (last entry 7:30pm). Booking online only gives you priority access. Take the M5 to Ponale or the M1 to Sesto Marelli and then bus 51, or bus 87 from Milano Centrale.

Art foundations

Beyond the museums, Milan has a group of private art foundations, set up by companies, fashion houses and collectors, that show contemporary art in their own buildings. Most of them are free, and several open only from Thursday to Sunday, so check the days before you cross town. Hours and prices below were checked on 6 October 2026.

Foundation	What it shows	Open	Price
Fondazione Prada	Contemporary art, cinema, permanent installations	Wed to Mon, 10am to 7pm	€15
Osservatorio Fondazione Prada	One show at a time, inside the Galleria	Daily, 10am to 8pm	€10
Pirelli HangarBicocca	Large installations in a former factory	Thu to Sun, 10:30am to 8:30pm	Free
Fondazione Luigi Rovati	Etruscan art with modern and contemporary works	Wed to Sun, 10am to 7pm	€16
Fondazione Adolfo Pini	A painter’s home and new shows	Mon to Fri, 10am to 7pm	Free
Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro	The sculptor’s own art collection	Sat and Sun, 11am to 7pm	€8, free under 26
Fondazione Elpis	Young contemporary artists	Thu to Sun, noon to 7pm	Free
Fondazione Sozzani	Photography, fashion, design	By appointment	Free, booked online
Armani/Silos	Giorgio Armani’s fashion	Wed to Sun, 11am to 7pm	€12

Prada, the Osservatorio and HangarBicocca now

The three largest foundations are described above. At the Fondazione Prada in Largo Isarco, Mona Hatoum’s site-specific project Over, Under and In Between runs until 9 November 2026. The Osservatorio, on the top floor of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, shows Hito Steyerl’s The Island until 30 October 2026; a ticket for the Osservatorio alone costs €10 (€8 reduced), and the €15 Fondazione Prada ticket covers both venues within 30 days. At HangarBicocca, Aki Sasamoto’s XYZ is on until 17 January 2027.

Fondazione Luigi Rovati

The Fondazione Luigi RovatiMap, at Corso Venezia 52, is a museum of Etruscan art that hangs modern and contemporary works next to the ancient pieces. It is closed for a new installation until 13 October 2026 and reopens on 14 October with Etruschi e Veneti, a show on water, cults and sanctuaries of the Etruscans and the ancient Veneti, until 10 January 2027.

• Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 7pm (last entry 6pm). Closed Monday and Tuesday.
• Tickets: €16; €12 over 65 and students up to 26; €8 ages 11 to 18; free under 10 and for everyone on the first Sunday of the month. The garden is free to walk into.

Fondazione Adolfo Pini

The Fondazione Adolfo PiniMap, at Corso Garibaldi 2, keeps the first floor of the 19th-century home of the painter Renzo Bongiovanni Radice as it was, with his paintings, furniture and objects. Visits to this floor are free but must be booked online, and each one is a 45-minute guided tour in Italian or English. The temporary shows are free with no booking; the next one, Hard Assets, with works by Francesca Pionati and Tommaso Arnaldi, opens on 8 October 2026.

• Hours: Monday to Friday, 10am to 7pm (last entry 6pm). The home also opens on the first Thursday of the month (6pm to 8pm) and the first Saturday (10am to 2pm).

Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro

The Fondazione Arnaldo PomodoroMap, at Via Vigevano 3 near Porta Genova, shows Open Studio #5 from 3 October 2026 to 30 May 2027: the sculptor’s own collection, built from works he bought, swapped with other artists or received as gifts. It opens on Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 7pm (last entry 6:30pm). Tickets cost €8 (€5 reduced) and are free under 26.

Fondazione Elpis

Fondazione ElpisMap supports young artists and has two spaces near Porta Romana: the Villa at Via Orti 25 and the LavanderiaMap, a former laundry at Via Lamarmora 26. Both are free and open Thursday to Sunday from noon to 7pm (last entry 6:40pm). Benjamin Jones’s True Reality is at the Villa until 18 October 2026.

Fondazione Sozzani

Carla Sozzani’s gallery, active since 1990 and for years a fixture of Corso Como, is now run by Fondazione SozzaniMap from two venues: Via Enrico Tazzoli 3, near Monumentale, and a former tile factory at Via Bovisasca 87Map in Bovisa. The current shows include photography and painting, the sculptor Kris Ruhs and the foundation’s fashion archive. They are visited by appointment: admission is free, and you book it from the foundation’s website.

Fondazione ICA Milano

Fondazione ICA MilanoMap, at Via Orobia 26, is also by Lodi T.I.B.B. metro (M3), so it pairs with Fondazione Prada. Its next two shows, by Éric Baudelaire and Leonardo Devito, open on 26 October and run until 19 December 2026. Check the opening hours on icamilano.it before you go.

Fondazione Nicola Trussardi

The Fondazione Nicola Trussardi has no gallery of its own. It stages one project at a time in buildings around the city, usually free: its last exhibition, Fata Morgana, filled Palazzo Morando until January 2026. No new show is on in October 2026; the next one will appear on its website.

Armani/Silos, Feltrinelli and Stelline

Armani/SilosMap, at Via Bergognone 40 in the Tortona area, is the fashion house’s own exhibition space. It currently shows Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025, twenty years of haute couture. It opens Wednesday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm (last entry 6pm); tickets cost €12 and entry is free on the first Sunday of the month.

The Fondazione Giangiacomo FeltrinelliMap, at Viale Pasubio 5 near Porta Garibaldi, is a research library and archive in a building by Herzog & de Meuron, opened in 2016. It does not show art, but its public talks are free and the reading room opens Monday to Friday from 9:30am to 5:30pm.

Fondazione StellineMap, at Corso Magenta 61 near the Last Supper, is closed for renovation until mid 2027.

Free museums in Milan

Free every day:

• The permanent collection of the Mudec.
• Palazzo MorandoMap, Milan’s costume and fashion museum on Via Sant’Andrea.
• The Museo del Risorgimento and Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano, both civic museums.
• Pirelli HangarBicocca, Thursday to Sunday.
• The Triennale building and the Sforza Castle courtyards.

Free on the first Sunday of the month (next: 1 November and 6 December 2026): the paid civic museums (Sforza Castle, Museo del Novecento, GAM, the Archaeological Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Aquarium), plus Gallerie d’Italia. Brera and the Last Supper are free too, but you still need a reservation. At the civic museums you cannot buy free tickets online for that day, so expect a line at the door.

Free on the second Tuesday of the month, up to age 25 (next: 13 October, 10 November and 8 December 2026): the same paid civic museums.

Under 18s enter the civic museums, Brera and Fondazione Prada free every day, and Gallerie d’Italia is free under 26.

Free art at gallery openings

Museums are not the only place to see new art. Milan’s private galleries open their shows with a vernissage, free for anyone who walks in. Search Google for “vernissage Milano” to find the week’s openings; they often pour you a glass of wine as well. The Artribune openings calendar and itinerarinellarte.it list them with dates and addresses.

Milan museum cards: which one to buy

Card	Price	What it covers	Good for
Milano Museo Card	€15	All civic museums for one year	One person seeing two or more civic museums
Tourist Museum Card	€20	One entry to each civic museum over 3 consecutive days	Sharing: the card is not personal
Milan House Museums Card	€25 (€15 reduced)	Poldi Pezzoli, Bagatti Valsecchi and the other two house museums	Seeing both house museums

The Milano Museo Card is the better deal for most travelers: Sforza Castle (€10), the Museo del Novecento (€10) and GAM (€8) add up to €28 at full price. It carries your name, so bring ID. The Tourist Museum Card costs €5 more, but anyone can use it, and its 3 days start from your first entry. Both are sold online on the official civic museums shop. Neither covers Brera, the Ambrosiana, the Last Supper or the private museums.

Museums open on Monday

Monday is the hardest day for museums in Milan. Brera, Sforza Castle, the Museo del Novecento, GAM, the science museum, the Triennale, the Mudec, Gallerie d’Italia, Bagatti Valsecchi and the Last Supper are all closed. These stay open:

• Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, 10am to 6pm (closed Wednesday instead).
• Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 10am to 6pm (closed Tuesday instead).
• Fondazione Prada, 10am to 7pm (closed Tuesday instead).
• The Duomo and its terraces, and the La Scala Museum, which opens every day.

Our 3 days in Milan itinerary shows how to build a Monday around these.

How to plan your museum days

• Book the Last Supper first. Then fit Brera and the rest around your time slot. The 2 days in Milan itinerary combines the Last Supper with Sforza Castle.
• Reserve Brera, especially on the free first Sunday, when the reservation is required.
• Buy the science museum online for weekends, with a date and time.
• Group by area. The Ambrosiana, the Museo del Novecento and Gallerie d’Italia are all within a few minutes of the Duomo. Poldi Pezzoli and Bagatti Valsecchi are a short walk apart near Via Monte Napoleone.
• Watch for one-off closures. On 8 October 2026, from 10am to 2pm, the civic museums may be closed or partly closed because of a staff meeting.

Guided tours make sense for the Last Supper when official tickets are gone, and for Brera if you want a guide to walk you through the collection.

For the sights beyond museums, our list of things to do in Milan has prices and closing days for the Duomo, the Navigli and the rest of the first-trip list.