The Archaeological Museum of Milan is located in an extraordinary architectural context, the former convent of the Monastero Maggiore di San Maurizio, founded in the eighth century AD, where the history of ancient Milan still shows its traces.

The Archaeological Museum collects the testimonies of various ancient cultures . Many works, of which a selection is exhibited in the itineraries dedicated to Ancient Milan, come from the excavations conducted in the city starting from the nineteenth century. The heritage of the museum was then enriched over time by various works, coming from donations, purchases and deposits. The Museum's collections are exhibited in different rooms depending on the cultural context to which they belong. On the ground floor, past the first cloister dedicated to public buildings, there is the Milano Antica section. The tour continues in the basement - the Gandhara Art section and the Abitare section in Mediolanum - and then in the internal cloister where the epigraphs of the ancient Milanese are exhibited next to the remains of Roman Milan (domus, walls and towers). In the new wing, reachable from the cloister, on the ground floor, next to the conference-didactic room, there is the section dedicated to Caesarea Maritima (Israel). The early medieval section is on the first floor, the Etruscan section on the second, while the third floor is dedicated to the Greek section.

The Egyptian, Prehistory and Protohistory collections are exhibited in the Visconti rooms of the Castello Sforzesco.