Pinacoteca Ambrosiana
Renaissance picture gallery holding a jeweled relic case with a Borgia noblewoman's stolen lock of hair.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan opens with Lord Byron reaching into a locked case to take a keepsake: a lock of hair belonging to Lucrezia Borgia, sealed away since 1685. It traces the secret affair behind it, coded love letters Lucrezia wrote to the Venetian poet Pietro Bembo during her marriage to the Duke of Ferrara, and how Byron talked his way close enough to memorize the letters before he acted. Caravaggio, Raphael and Leonardo's own notebooks hang in the rooms nearby.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Pinacoteca di Brera
Grand art gallery of Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces inside a former Jesuit college, founded on Napoleon's orders.
Poldi Pezzoli Museum
House-museum of a nineteenth-century noble collector, its gilded Renaissance-style hall rebuilt after wartime bombing destroyed it.
Bagatti Valsecchi Museum
House museum built as a Renaissance illusion, filled with period art and hidden modern comforts.
Casa museo Boschi di Stefano
Private apartment turned gallery, walls once hung floor to ceiling with a couple's collected twentieth century Italian art.
Gallerie d’Italia
Neoclassical bank palazzo turned art museum, paintings hung on sliding grilles in its old vault.
Museo del Duomo di Milano
Repository of centuries of original cathedral sculpture, stained glass and relics, replaced outside by exact copies.