From September 22 to 28, 2026, Milan once again takes center stage on the international scene with Milan Fashion Week. For one week, fashion designers, luxury houses, creatives, photographers, influencers, and enthusiasts from around the world gather in the city that is now considered one of the global capitals of fashion.
Yet the Milan we see during Fashion Week is only the latest chapter in a much longer story. Before the runways, collections, and major international events, there were Roman Mediolanum, the Sforza court, Leonardo da Vinci, the Five Days of Milan in 1848, and the Italian Risorgimento.
It is a story spanning more than two thousand years, marked by transformation, conflict, art, innovation, and the people who helped shape the city's identity.
It is precisely this Milan, the one that exists beyond the catwalks, that we have chosen to tell through our canvas artworks.
Roman Milan: From Celtic Oppidum to Imperial Capital
To understand Milan's history, we must travel back more than two thousand years, when the area occupied by the modern city was home to the principal settlement of the Insubres, a Celtic people of Cisalpine Gaul.
In 222 BC, Rome conquered Mediolanum, beginning a new phase in the city's history. Thanks to its strategic location in the Po Valley and its proximity to the major commercial and military routes, Mediolanum grew rapidly and became one of the most important centers in northern Italy.
It is this long transformation, from its Celtic origins to the Imperial era, that is told by our canvas dedicated to Roman Mediolanum, from its Celtic origins to its role as the capital of the Western Roman Empire.
During the age of Julius Caesar, Mediolanum obtained the status of municipium and continued to develop as a political and economic center of the region. In the following centuries, its importance grew even further, reaching its peak between the late 3rd and 4th centuries AD.
In AD 286, Emperor Diocletian chose Milan as the seat of the Western Roman Emperor together with Maximian. The city was transformed into a major political and military center, complete with imperial palaces, baths, a circus, and other monumental structures.
In AD 313, it was in Milan that Constantine and Licinius reached the agreement known as the Edict of Milan, which established a new policy of religious tolerance toward Christianity. Roman Milan had become one of the great cities of the Roman world.
Caesar, Mediolanum, and the Conquest of Gaul
To understand Milan during Caesar's era, however, we must look beyond the city's boundaries. Mediolanum was located in Cisalpine Gaul, within a Roman world undergoing profound transformation. Between 58 and 44 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar played a central role in one of the most important phases of Roman Republican history: the conquest of Gaul, the civil war, and the gradual concentration of power into his own hands.
Our map of the Roman world during the time of Julius Caesar portrays precisely this scenario. It offers a new way of viewing Milan's history, not as an isolated episode, but as part of the broader Roman political and military system to which Mediolanum belonged.
Before the civil war and the great campaigns that would make him one of the most influential figures in Roman history, Caesar served as governor of Cisalpine Gaul, where he recruited numerous legions that formed the army with which he conquered Transalpine Gaul and later secured victory in the Civil War against Pompey and the Optimates.
Our canvas dedicated to Julius Caesar, Proconsul of the Gauls and commander of the Roman legions explores this dimension of his character: not only the protagonist of great battles, but also the commander and statesman who steadily built his own power.
From Mediolanum to Caesar, the common thread is a city situated within one of the most strategically important regions of the Roman world.
Renaissance Milan: The Sforza Dynasty and the City of Creativity
Many centuries later, Milan once again assumed a leading role in Italian history, this time as one of the great courts of the Renaissance. Under the Sforza family, the city became an important political and cultural center. Artists, architects, engineers, and intellectuals were invited to the court, and Milan experienced a remarkable period of artistic development.
It is the Renaissance Milan of the Sforza, its canals, and its artistic workshops, which we have portrayed in another of our canvases. It was in this context that one of the figures destined to become the ultimate symbol of Milanese creativity arrived in the city: Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo arrived in 1482 and remained in Milan for several years, working for the court of Ludovico il Moro. Painter, engineer, inventor, and scholar, he perfectly embodied the blending of disciplines that characterized the Milanese Renaissance. For this reason, we created a canvas dedicated to Leonardo in Milan and his work at the court of Ludovico il Moro.
Leonardo, The Last Supper, and Santa Maria delle Grazie
Among the most famous works created by Leonardo during his Milanese period is The Last Supper, painted on the wall of the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie.
The masterpiece became one of the universal symbols of the city and one of the most recognizable landmarks of Renaissance Milan.
In our canvas dedicated to Leonardo and The Last Supper, we chose to reinterpret this moment in Milanese history through a contemporary visual language.
Another artwork in our collection is dedicated to Leonardo and Santa Maria delle Grazie in Renaissance Milan.
These are two different ways of telling the story of the same heritage: that of a city which, during the Renaissance, became a meeting point for art, technology, culture, and innovation.
And it is difficult not to see a connection with contemporary Milan.
From Renaissance Workshops to Fashion Week Runways
Today, Milan is known throughout the world for fashion, design, and its ability to transform creativity into industry.
Of course, there is no direct line connecting the workshops of Renaissance artists to today's fashion runways. Yet both are part of the cultural history of a city that, in very different eras, built a strong identity around creativity and experimentation.
It is a cultural continuity, not a historical one. And to understand another part of Milan's identity, we must move forward to the nineteenth century.
The Five Days of Milan: The City Rises in 1848
Between March 18 and March 22, 1848, Milan became the stage for one of the most important uprisings of the Italian Risorgimento. For five days, the citizens of Milan rebelled against Austrian rule, building barricades in the streets and fighting against the troops of Marshal Radetzky.
The revolt led to the withdrawal of Austrian forces from the city and contributed to the events that prompted Charles Albert to declare war on Austria, marking the beginning of the First Italian War of Independence.
The Five Days therefore represent another pivotal moment in the city's history: Milan was no longer merely a political and economic center, but became one of the symbols of the struggle for Italian independence. We have portrayed this historic episode in our canvas dedicated to the Five Days of Milan in 1848 and the barricades in front of the Duomo.
The scene depicts a Milan very different from that of the Renaissance courts: a city transformed by revolt, where the streets became the stage for a decisive moment in Italian history.
1859: Victor Emmanuel II and Napoleon III Enter Milan
Eleven years after the Five Days, Milan once again stood at the center of Risorgimento history.
In 1859, the Second Italian War of Independence led to the liberation of Lombardy from Austrian rule. Following the Franco-Piedmontese victory at the Battle of Magenta on June 4, Victor Emmanuel II and Napoleon III entered Milan on June 8, welcomed by the city's population. The procession crossed the city to the Arch of Peace, one of the most representative monuments of nineteenth-century Milan.
This is the moment portrayed in our canvas dedicated to the triumphal entry of Victor Emmanuel II and Napoleon III into Milan in 1859.
This image ideally concludes the Risorgimento journey represented in our Milan-themed canvases: from the barricades of 1848 to the celebrations of 1859, when Milan became one of the symbols of the new Italy that was emerging.
From Historic Milan to Milan Fashion Week
Mediolanum, the Sforza dynasty, Leonardo, the Five Days, the Risorgimento.
These are very different chapters in Milan's history, yet they all tell the story of a city in constant transformation. Roman Milan was a strategic center of the Empire. Renaissance Milan was one of the great artistic courts of Italy.
The Milan of the Risorgimento played a leading role in the struggle for independence, a period also represented in one of our large historical canvas maps. Today, Milan is one of the world's capitals of fashion and design.
During Fashion Week, the city once again becomes an international meeting point for creativity, culture, and innovation. Yet this ability to attract people, ideas, and talent from around the world has much deeper roots. Fashion Week tells the story of contemporary Milan. History tells the story of everything that came before.
The Milan We Tell Through IBAM Canvases
This is precisely why we chose to dedicate part of the IBAM collection to the history of Milan. Not to turn history into mere decoration, but to bring into people's homes some of the events, places, and personalities that helped shape the city's identity.
From Roman Mediolanum to the Roman world of Julius Caesar, from the Milan of the Sforza dynasty and Leonardo da Vinci to the Five Days of 1848, and finally to the entry of Victor Emmanuel II and Napoleon III in 1859, each canvas tells a different chapter of Milan's long history. For one week, Milan will once again be under the spotlight of the world.
But behind the Milan of the runways lies another Milan: Roman, Renaissance, and Risorgimento Milan. And it is that Milan that we want to bring back to light.