Pirelli HangarBicocca

Pirelli HangarBicocca: free entry, Thursday to Sunday

At Pirelli HangarBicocca, the German artist Anselm Kiefer’s seven concrete towers rise 13 to 19 metres, each weighing 90 tonnes, with books and wedges of lead set between their levels.

Entry is free, and so is booking a time online, which gets you priority at the door; without one you’re let in as space allows and may wait while people who booked go first.

The exhibitions open only four days a week, and stay open into the evening. A few days this winter are already marked as closed, some of them only for Kiefer’s towers and the Luciano Fabro exhibition, so check the dates before a visit in November or December.

Families and wheelchair users will find the halls easy going, since there are no steps or barriers. Under-10s hold an adult’s hand, and photos and video are allowed for personal use. There are lockers and baby-changing, and the information point has wheelchairs and folding stools.

Anselm Kiefer’s Seven Heavenly Palaces at HangarBicocca

I Sette Palazzi Celesti 2004–2015 is the work to come for. Kiefer built the seven towers of reinforced concrete from stacked container modules.

The title comes from the Sefer Hechalot, a Hebrew text of the 5th and 6th centuries about the palaces of heaven. Kiefer made the towers for the opening of HangarBicocca in 2004, working with students from the Brera Academy, Milan’s academy of fine arts.

They stand in the Navate, the long naves of the old factory. In September 2015 five of his large paintings, made between 2009 and 2013, were hung beside them.

What’s on at HangarBicocca this autumn and winter

The towers stay, and the rest of the building changes. This season the Navate also hold a show of the Italian artist Luciano Fabro, Abitare lo spazio. Inhabiting Space, until 21 February 2027, and the Shed, the low brick hall, has Aki Sasamoto’s XYZ until 17 January 2027.

A 2024 work by eL Seed, Waves Only Exist Because the Wind Blows, is on permanent view. Next year the Shed moves on to Carlos Bunga, from 18 February to 18 July 2027, and the Navate to Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, from 8 April to 25 July 2027.

Bus 51 or 87 from the metro to HangarBicocca

HangarBicocca is at Via Chiese 2, and there’s no metro station at the door. Take the metro to one of two stations and change to bus 51 or 87, which stop on Via Chiese.

The Breda factory at Bicocca, before the art

The halls belonged to Breda, the company the engineer Ernesto Breda founded in 1886, which moved out here to Bicocca in 1903. It built railway carriages and electric and steam locomotives, and in the First World War aircraft and shells. Pirelli, the tyre maker, followed it to the area, along with Falck and Marelli, and Bicocca became one of Italy’s big industrial districts.

You walk through three parts of that plant. Besides the Shed there’s the Cubo, from 1955, and the Navate, built in 1963–65 for the department that made electrical transformers.

In the 1980s the engineering group Ansaldo bought Breda and the factories closed. In 1986 the Progetto Bicocca began turning the district into a university, offices and housing, and the art space opened in the old halls in 2004.