The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan was the first art museum in the world open to the public, in 1618. The original nucleus of the collection was the donation by Cardinal Federico Borromeo of his own collection of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures to the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, an institution he founded in 1609. Over the following four centuries, the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana would be enriched with numerous masterpieces of Italian and European art.

Within the exhibition path, articulated in 26 rooms, visitors can admire some of the most extraordinary masterpieces of all time, such as Leonardo's Musician, Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit, Raphael's preparatory cartoon for the School of Athens, Titian's Adoration of the Magi, Botticelli's Madonna of the Pavilion, and Jan Brueghel's splendid Flower Vases.

Walking from one room to another, visitors can also discover true curiosities, such as the gloves worn by Napoleon at Waterloo or the case containing a lock of Lucrezia Borgia's hair, concluding the visit in the grandiose seventeenth-century reading room of the Library, now a permanent venue for the exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus.