Milan, today known for its robust role in finance and fashion, was once defined by blocks of manufacturing warehouses on its outskirts. Many of those factories are now museums. A former gin distillery became Fondazione Prada, a contemporary art museum from the namesake fashion house, founded in 1995 in the southeast Porta Romana area.

A gas turbine factory reopened in 2015 as Mudec, an arts and culture center in the southwest Tortona neighborhood. And in 2004, the Pirelli HangarBicocca foundation opened its first art installations in a former locomotive manufacturer, in the northeast neighborhood now called Bicocca.