The University of Milan is a public teaching and research university, which - with 8 faculties and 2 schools and a teaching staff of more than 2000 professors - is distinguished by its wide variety of disciplinary fields.

A leading institute in Italy and Europe for scientific productivity, the University of Milan is the largest university in the region, with approximately 64,000 students; it is also an important resource for the socio-economic context of which it is a part.

Milan is, in fact, the capital of Lombardy, one of the most dynamic and international regions in the European Union, a leader in the national economy that stands at the Italian forefront of research and development investments and commitment to technological innovation.

The University of Milan also possesses a remarkable artistic and cultural heritage that includes important historic buildings, inherited and acquired collections, archives, botanical gardens and the old Brera Observatory commissioned by Maria Teresa of Austria.

The University’s departments are housed in important historic edifices in the centre of Milan and in modern buildings in the area known as Città Studi (the City of Studies).

Among the palazzos that house the University’s facilities are the old Ca'​ Granda (the big house) – a monumental complex from the 15th-century in the heart of the historical city centre - the 18th-century Palazzo Greppi designed by Giuseppe Piermarini – who built the Scala Theatre in Milan – and the 17th-century Sant’Alessandro College commissioned by the Arcimboldi family.

The book collection, which is one of the richest in the region, is preserved in 47 libraries, while the APICE Centre collects rare and valuable book stocks and archives.

A great university is an articulated and complex organism, called to account - including the preparation of a functional and flexible organizational structure - the multiple needs from its stakeholders, working in close collaboration with the cultural, social and economic reference.

An overview to learn about the university: its history, the organizational, government bodies and regulatory references, human resources and locations of offices throughout the country. The statistical data, updated in real time, illustrating the dynamics of the student population in recent years.

History

The establishment of the University of Milan dates back to 1924: an undoubtedly recent onset when compared with that of other centuries-old national and European contexts, although it must be said that the new university was born on the basis of existing institutions, remarkable tradition and great prestige .

In delaying the start in the city of Milan a proper university higher education system played a leading role neighbor, and very old, University of Pavia.

At least until the next national unification period he continued to enforce the scheme which provided that only Ticino University the task of actively maintaining the four traditional characteristics of a University Faculty in the proper sense, allowing Milan to set up specialized structures on the application side, more directly functional industrial interests, agricultural, commercial and financial city. It is no coincidence, in this regard, that the establishment of other realities the articulated Milanese university system - like the Bocconi University, the Catholic or college - has taken place only in the years following the Unification of Italy.

Milan, however, thanks to a ruling class combative and sensitive to the demands of modernization and progress, had certainly not given up all for this function in the field of higher education and exercise the professions, setting up high-level institutions, some of which are intended to merge later in the city university system.

Already since 1600, in addition to preparatory to the medical profession that took place as part of the "Cà Granda", the hospital wanted by Francesco Sforza in the middle of the fifteenth century (and that five centuries after he accepted the headquarters of the University degli Studi), arose in Milan undisputed qualifying institutions.

Take for example the Palatine Schools, created at the beginning of the seventeenth century and who lived in the period of the Habsburg reformism their heyday, with prestigious teachings, including that of Paolo Frisi, Cesare Beccaria and Giuseppe Parini, or the Observatory astronomical Brera, directed by father La Grange, or the School of Veterinary Medicine, founded in 1791, and that in the thirties of the twentieth century gave rise to the homonymous faculty of the University.

direct antecedent of the Faculty of Humanities of the University was the Scientific-Literary Academy, as the Royal Technical School - the current Polytechnic - it was promoted by the Casati Law of 1859. Primarily aimed at its birth to teacher training, although no lack of stress, especially by Graziadio Ascoli, to accentuate more properly scientific functions, the Academy was in aggregate following a school of modern languages.

In 1870 it was initiated another institution which will become part of the University, the Upper School of Agriculture, whose Statute, in addition to educational and training tasks, it emphasized the function of "promoting the advancement through experimental research. "

A key step in the path that would lead to consider no longer extended the setting up of public university in Milan, accentuating the impatience with the persistent prerogatives of Pavia, was the inauguration in 1906, the clinical improvement institutes for young people doctors, intended and promoted by Luigi Mangiagalli. A key figure in the events that led to the founding of the University, obstetrician, located in the politically radical democracy, elected deputy in 1902 and later mayor of Milan, Mangiagalli worked strenuously - in the first two decades of the twentieth century - for Milan equipping of a higher education system at the height of the functions of a modern metropolis is not limited to the ground, he naturally more expensive, medical science, and going far beyond the idea of ​​giving life to a great Lombard medical Faculty.

The development of medical-town health facilities - connected start of clinical training institutes set up in hospitals citizens - was such that the Pavia Medical School, in 1922, to demand the assignment in Milan. Hypothesis soon waned, even after the outcry of local environments, but that says a lot about how times were now changed.

The dogged determination of Luigi Mangiagalli and the value of his personal initiative are out of the question, but it must be remembered that he acted relying on the strong support of the Milan leadership, well aware, in those decades, the central role that a system of education d 'senior was playing in favor of modernization and development processes. The Mangiagalli was enthusiastically supported by the decisive contribution of local authorities, who would accompany him to the founding of the University.

It had to a large extent to a coalition of citizen forces the realization of his plan to gather all our institutions of higher education by an even at the edge of metropolitan area, the future "City of Studies", whose first stone was mail in 1915. an area initially considered too wide for hosting the institutes, but that once the works were completed in 1927, would prove insufficient to accommodate the structure of the new University of Studies, meanwhile constituted.

At the founding of the University of Milan opens the way the Gentile reform of September 1923, which - taking note of the incompatibility between Pavia and Milan Medical School clinical salons - merges recent scientific and literary academy it to a new state university , rector Luigi Mangiagalli. University also from very modest appearance, composed of a single Faculty - Humanities - and with clinical institutes whose responsibility the sole task of post-graduate training, who already exercised.

However, specifying that the University could provide with further agreements between the state and other entities could determine its configuration, including in relation to found financial means, the law Gentile opened a window to enlarge the areas of expertise of the new University, an opportunity that Luigi Mangiagalli, who had become mayor of Milan, did not fail to seize.

To his appeal because Milan did not remain without a university worthy of his rank, the local forces, the City in the forefront, responded with a budgetary allocation can confer the Ateneo a very different appearance from the one originally proposed.

On 28 August 1924, at the Prefecture, was signed the agreement by which it sanctioned the birth of the University of Milan, "complete" the four Faculty of Law, Humanities, Medicine, Physical Sciences, Mathematical and Natural Sciences , as well as Mangiagalli had wanted.