Il caveau delle Gallerie d'Italia

How does a great art collection come to be? The vault of the former Banca Commerciale Italiana offers the public the extraordinary opportunity to visit one of the symbolic places of Milan’s financial world in the early 20th century. In the pulsating heart of Piazza della Scala, the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan opens the doors to one of the most fascinating spaces in the entire museum. Like any reputable bank, the former Banca Commerciale Italiana had a vault where valuable personal assets were stored. An environment that until a few decades ago was hidden and inaccessible to most is now available as an extraordinary cultural treasure and a symbol of the transformation of the role of businesses and their positive impacts in the cultural sector. Designed by architect and art historian Luca Beltrami, the Gallerie d’Italia vault no longer houses safety deposit boxes but instead preserves something equally precious: around five hundred paintings belonging to the Intesa Sanpaolo collection. In this large space, the public can admire the artworks placed on sliding mesh panels, a functional system that optimizes the conditions for archiving and preservation while allowing for the creation of exhibition paths that dialogue with the better-known spaces of the museum's Milan headquarters, inaugurated in 2012. Entering the vault means experiencing a different and unexpected museum experience. A place that overturns the very concept of storage and provides a concrete example of the synergy enacted by the banking institution, in its dual role as a business and collector. Through the careful repurposing of a space originally designed to protect material goods, Intesa Sanpaolo reaffirms its role as a cultural agent, considering the care and promotion of the historical-artistic heritage as an integral part of its institutional mission. A project capable of preserving the memory of the past and, through public sharing, projecting it into the future.