HangarBicocca, Contemporary art museum in Bicocca district, Milan, Italy
HangarBicocca is a contemporary art museum housed in a converted industrial building in Milan's Bicocca district. The former factory has been adapted into an exhibition space with soaring ceilings and open layouts designed to accommodate large-scale artistic installations.
The building belonged to the Società Italiana Ernesto Breda, the Lombard engineering firm founded in 1886 by Ernesto Breda of Padua, which built railway carriages and steam and electric locomotives. Industrial production in the Bicocca area began in 1903 and wound down between 1980 and 1986, when an urban renewal project started. Prelios, then called Pirelli RealEstate, bought the site in 2004 and turned it into a contemporary art venue; it became a foundation in 2008.
The name HangarBicocca combines the hangar-like halls with the Bicocca district. The Shed, built in the 1920s, still shows exposed brick, double-pitched roofs and large skylights where locomotives and farm machinery were assembled. In the Navate, rails used to test locomotives remain visible in the floor beneath Anselm Kiefer's The Seven Heavenly Palaces.
The museum is open Thursday through Sunday with no admission charge. It is easily accessible by metro lines M1 and M5, and the spacious layout makes it straightforward to navigate at your own pace.
The Navate hall still shows the rails used to test locomotives, visible on the floor around Anselm Kiefer's The Seven Heavenly Palaces. The 2004 installation was enlarged in September 2015 with five large paintings.
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