Pinacoteca di Brera

The Brera palace was a Jesuit college, and Napoleon turned part of it into a gallery in 1809, filling it with paintings taken from churches and convents across northern Italy. In the colonnaded courtyard stands Canova's bronze of him, nude as Mars the Peacemaker. The same palazzo houses a library, an observatory and a botanical garden.

Highlights include Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ, painted in startling foreshortening, Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin, Piero della Francesca's Montefeltro Altarpiece and Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus. Near the end is Francesco Hayez's The Kiss, one of Italy's most reproduced paintings.