Museo Egizio di Milano

Milan's civic Egyptian collection is housed in the Visconti halls beneath Sforza Castle. The Galleria Antico Egitto brings together sarcophagi, papyri and bronzes with the history of Milanese archaeological research in the Fayum.

Why it matters

Most travellers associate Egyptology in Italy with Turin, yet Milan has quietly built its own civic Egyptian collection since the early nineteenth century. The gallery reopened in March 2026 with about 330 objects on display, spanning the fourth millennium BC to the fifth century AD. Its collection forms part of the wider museum complex at Sforza Castle.

What to notice

The statue of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, who ruled in the nineteenth century BC, is associated with the temple at Medinet Madi uncovered by Milanese excavators in the 1930s. The collection also includes the funerary equipment of Peftauajaset, bronze statuettes of deities, canopic jars, stelae, ushabti figures and sarcophagi. The display design, inspired by Egyptian hypostyle halls, uses full-height showcases.

Context and history

The first Egyptian objects reached Milan in the 1820s, at a time when antiquities from the Nile were entering European collections through dealers and travellers. Ownership of the core collections passed to the City of Milan in 1900, and the holdings grew through private donations and through digs conducted in Egypt by the papyrologist Achille Vogliano in the 1930s at Tebtynis and in the sacred area of Medinet Madi in the Fayum, where his team discovered an important temple, building a patrimony the city now counts at more than 3,000 objects. A first dedicated Egyptian museum opened inside the castle's Rocchetta courtyard in 1973; a redesigned display moved into the Visconti halls in 2003, with multimedia supports and lighting upgrades following in 2021. After a long closure for reorganisation, the gallery reopened as Galleria Antico Egitto on 5 March 2026. Architect Markus Scherer designed its new hall around the form of an Egyptian temple's hypostyle hall.