The free Christmas exhibition at Palazzo Marino: which works will be on display and when they start

Milan, 9 November 2025 – The great Christmas exhibition returns to Palazzo Marino from 3 December, the now traditional event that every year offers Milanese people and tourists an extraordinary, free exhibition, set up in the Sala Alessi, the large and historic reception room of the Municipality of Milan.

Until January 11, 2026, it will be possible to admire one of the greatest masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance: the Monte San Martino Polyptych by Carlo and Vittore Crivelli , a fifteenth-century work that has rarely left its original home in the church of San Martino Vescovo in Monte San Martino (Macerata).

The project

Produced and promoted by the Municipality of Milan, the Archdiocese of Fermo and Intesa Sanpaolo, The Polyptych of Monte San Martino by Carlo and Vittore Crivelli is a project of Palazzo Reale and Gallerie d'Italia , in collaboration with the Municipality and the Parish of Monte San Martino, created by Civita Mostre e Musei with the support of Rinascente.

Curated by Giovanni Morale and Marcello Smarrelli, the exhibition is part of the program of the Milan Cortina 2026 Cultural Olympics . The catalog, which includes introductory and in-depth essays, as well as descriptions of the works, is published by Allemandi.

The legacy

Milan is profoundly Crivellian, thanks above all to Napoleon, who ordered the transfer of many of Carlo Crivelli's paintings from central Italy: around fifteen of these are kept at the Pinacoteca di Brera, two are at the Sforza Castle, and two more at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, a testament to Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli's far-sighted collecting.

It was therefore the Napoleonic period that brought to Milan the works of a then little-known author who has today become part of the city's cultural heritage.