Milan’s breathtaking new Etruscan Gallery

Milan’s Porto Venezia District is already one of the world’s coolest neighbourhoods. Now it’s taken up the cool factor another notch or two.

How? With the opening off the new Fondazione Luigi Rovati Art Museum at Corso Venezia 52.

The museum is housed in a breathtaking underground cavern, carved below the 19th Century Palazzo Bocconi-Rizzoli-Carraro.

Mario Cucinella Architects spent several years creating a space that evokes the Etruscan necropolis of Cerveteri.

The result is mindblowing.

There are three circular rooms and a mind-bending elliptical one.

Ancient treasures like the Cernuschi Warrior are seemingly in dialogue with modern masterpieces by Lucio Fontana, Arturo Martini, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.

The galleries mimic the stratification of subterranean earth but look exceedingly futuristic as well.

Giovanna Forlanelli, the President of the Luigi Rovati Foundation says that the resulting variation of shapes, light and colours, are ‘not containers but parts of the experience of the visit.’