Cultural Journey to Milan

The organised trip to Milan begins in the morning at Barcelona airport, where we gather to take the flight with scheduled departure at 11:20, arriving at Milano Malpensa at around 13:00. From the airport, a private transfer to the Grand Hotel Visconti Palace**** and a first lunch at the hotel’s own restaurant: a moment of gathering and rest before the experience begins.

In the afternoon we head to the Palazzo Reale di Milano to visit the exhibition dedicated to Anselm Kiefer (1945), one of the most influential artists of our time. In this show, the artist ventures into the symbolic world of alchemist women, fascinating figures from the hermetic tradition (Maria the Jewess, Cleopatra the Alchemist) whose search for the transformation of matter resonates in the powerful landscapes of memory, matter and myth that characterise his work. Landscape and ruin, ash and lead: as if history itself were a great process of transmutation.

Free time at the end to discover the streets of Milan or dine at one of its many restaurants. The city, vibrant and elegant, offers endless possibilities for letting oneself be carried along by its nocturnal atmosphere.

After breakfast at the hotel, we return to the Palazzo Reale di Milano to discover the second major exhibition of the Milanese season: Metafisica / Metafisiche, dedicated to one of the most fascinating episodes of 20th-century Italian art.

The show introduces us to the world of metaphysical painting, a movement that emerged in the years preceding the First World War and profoundly transformed the way of representing reality. In the works of Giorgio de Chirico, the central figure of the movement, silent squares, classical architecture, long shadows and enigmatic objects appear, creating an atmosphere of mystery and suspension. Alongside him, Carlo Carrà developed this visual language marked by strangeness and contemplation — faceless mannequins, scientific instruments, uninhabited interiors — that would exert a profound influence on Surrealism.

We then join our guide Lorena to venture into one of the city’s most singular and discreet neighbourhoods: the Quadrilatero del Silenzio. Built at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries by the Milanese bourgeoisie that emerged from the industrial revolution, this elegant residential neighbourhood is characterised by the Liberty style (the Italian version of European Art Nouveau), with façades decorated with fantastic motifs, hidden gardens and unexpected architectural details such as the celebrated Casa dell’Orecchio (“Ear House”), where an ear-shaped intercom allowed one to speak to the concierge long before the invention of electric door entry systems.

During the tour we visit the extraordinary Villa Necchi Campiglio, one of the city’s most elegant house museums. Built in the 1930s by architect Piero Portaluppi for the Necchi family, it is a refined example of Italian rationalism and the sophistication of the interwar Milanese upper bourgeoisie. Its interiors preserve the original decoration and furnishings, and the garden with swimming pool creates a surprising oasis of calm in the very heart of the city. A venue that gained further renown by serving as the setting for Luca Guadagnino’s film I Am Love.

Free time to enjoy the city, stroll or discover its rich gastronomic offering.

The final day begins with one of the most eagerly anticipated moments of the trip. After check-out, we head to the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie to contemplate the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. Painted between 1495 and 1498, this monumental work captured the dramatic instant in which Christ announces the betrayal by one of his apostles, constructing a scene of extraordinary psychological intensity and a composition that would transform the history of painting forever. Five centuries later, the emotion remains intact.

Next, a very special guided tour of Milan’s historic centre in which Leonardo himself (played by an actor) will accompany us as the narrator of his time. This theatrical walk allows us to discover the city through the gaze of the Renaissance genius, to learn about episodes from his daily life and to evoke the most productive years of his stay at the court of Ludovico Sforza. The tour takes us through the Teatro alla Scala, Piazza Mercanti, the Palazzo Reale, the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the Castello Sforzesco: the spaces that allow us to reconstruct the cultural and political atmosphere of Renaissance Milan in which Leonardo developed a fundamental part of his career.

In the afternoon, transfer to Milano Malpensa airport to take the return flight at 21:40, with scheduled arrival in Barcelona at 23:25. An author’s trip to Milan that closes with the same intensity with which it began. The end of a short but powerful weekend: a journey through the matter of art, the enigmas of thought and the silences of a city that has been, for centuries, a laboratory of imagination.