Sant’Eustorgio Cloisters

The Cloisters of Sant’Eustorgio stand on one of the most significant sites in the history of the Ambrosian Church. Indeed, according to tradition, it was right here, close by, that Saint Barnabas is said to have baptised the first Milanese Christians, giving rise to the local Church.

From as early as the thirteenth century, the complex was home to the first Dominican convent in Milan, and so the two cloisters, which today house the Museum of the Basilica of Sant’Eustorgio and the Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini, are what remains of that ancient convent. The first, adjoining the left side of the already existing basilica, was built towards the end of the third decade of the thirteenth century. It is not known exactly when the second cloister dates from; it was perhaps built thanks to the interest of Filippo Maria Visconti in 1413.

In 1526, following the clashes between Spanish and French troops, much of the convent was destroyed, and its reconstruction began only some decades later.
The first cloister today features a portico with slender columns, probably the result of seventeenth-century renovations. The second, now home to the Museum and perhaps designed by architects such as Carlo Buzzi or Francesco Maria Richini, is porticoed on three sides and features elegant paired columns in granite.
At the end of the eighteenth century the Dominicans were removed, and the convent was used by the Napoleonic army and later by Austrian troops, who caused extensive damage.
Restoration work is documented over the course of the nineteenth century, directed mainly at the church, while the cloisters were used as a barracks until 1911, the year the complex was acquired by the Municipality of Milan.
The air raid of 15 August 1943 left the complex in a precarious state: the first cloister, which was less damaged, passed to the parish, while in the second the north side had been entirely destroyed and the upper floor of the remaining three sides left without its roof.
In 1960 an agreement was established between the Municipality, the Diocese and the parish for the restoration of the monumental complex, but the work began only in the 1980s, to be completed in 2001 with the inauguration of the Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini.