Pinacoteca di Brera ★★★

Milan's Brera is one of the top painting galleries in Northern Italy, with works by Raphael, Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Mantegna, Bellini, and Piero della Francesca

Northern Italy's greatest painting gallery is unique among Italy's major art galleries in that it isn't founded on the riches of the church or collection of some noble family but rather the looting tendencies and democratic ideals of Napoléon, whose policies suppressed churches and monasteries across the region and carted their riches off to public galleries and academies such as the Brera (well, the best stuff went straight north to fill the Louvre, but plenty was left over for local edification).

Over the ensuing two centuries, the collections expanded to include some of the best of renaissance-era painting from Northern Italy's plains, fantastic representatives of the Venetian school, and several of the giant of Central Italy, including masterpieces by Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Tintoretto.

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