University of Milan

Before it became the university you know today, this place was a hospital complex with a very different mission. The old Ospedale Maggiore di Milano, first called the Magna Domus Hospitalis and better known by its nickname Ca’ Granda, was one of the earliest examples of civil architecture in Milan. It began in 1456, when Francesco I Sforza, the fourth Duke of Milan, commissioned it, and the design was entrusted to Filarete, the architect who gave the building its Renaissance identity. That origin matters, because the University of Milan does not just occupy a historic shell here — it inherited a building that had already spent centuries serving the city before education moved in.

From Hospital To University The university itself was founded on 30 September 1923 and formally created in 1924 through the merger of two older institutions: the Accademia Scientifico-Letteraria, active since 1861, and the Istituti Clinici di Perfezionamento, established in 1906. That merger brought together traditions of medical, scientific, and humanistic study under one roof. At the beginning, there were four classic schools: Law, Humanities, Medicine, and Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences. By 1928, the new university already had the fourth-highest enrolment in Italy, after the University of Naples, Sapienza University of Rome, and the University of Padua.