Museo Teatrale alla Scala

Museo Teatrale alla Scala sits beside Teatro alla Scala in Milan, inside the historic Casa Ricordi. That eighteenth-century building places theatrical history beside the city’s celebrated opera house. Wheelchair access makes the collection available as it traces theatre from antiquity to the modern day.

The museum opened to the public in 1913, after Italian state support and fifty private citizens helped acquire the Sambon collection. Ancient Greek and Roman ceramics stand alongside oil lamps marked with theatrical scenes. Meissen and Capodimonte porcelain brings commedia dell’arte masks into the display, while portraits show actors, composers, and singers. Programmes, posters, costume sketches, stage-curtain designs, and memorabilia reveal theatre’s working life. Marionettes from Europe and Asia extend that story into a dedicated puppet-theatre section.

The Livia Simoni Library holds works on theatre, opera, and dance, alongside an archive of photographs, posters, and costume designs. Manuscripts and scores by Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi add a direct link to Italian opera.