Napoleon Bonaparte had a habit of helping himself to other people's art. When he rode into Milan in 1796, he didn't just take the city — he transformed it.

Milan became the capital of his Cisalpine Republic, and the Pinacoteca di Brera, then a modest student gallery attached to the Academy of Fine Arts, became something grander. Paintings stripped from suppressed monasteries across northern Italy poured in, along with works seized from conquered territories. The Viennese Congress of 1815 returned some, but much stayed.

Today, the gallery holds one of Italy's finest collections, including Raphael's Betrothal of the Virgin and Mantegna's Dead Christ. The Palazzo di Brera has a longer story still: from medieval monks to Jesuit astronomers who discovered Mars from its rooftop observatory.

VoiceMap's tours trace the neighbourhood's layered past, connecting the gallery's Napoleonic origins to Milan's transformation from Austrian outpost to Italian capital.