University of Milan

The University of Milan (Italian: Università degli Studi di Milano; Latin: Universitas Studiorum Mediolanensis), officially abbreviated as UniMi, or colloquially referred to as La Statale ("the State [University]"), is a public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with about 60,000 students, and a permanent teaching and research staff of about 2,000.

The University of Milan has ten schools and offers 140 undergraduate and graduate degree programmes, 32 doctoral schools and 65+ specialization schools. The university's research and teaching activities have grown over the years and have received important international recognitions. The university is the only Italian member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), a group of twenty-one research-intensive European universities.

The university has been frequented by many notable alumni, including Enrico Bombieri (Fields Medal recipient, 1974), Riccardo Giacconi (Nobel laureate in Physics, 2002), Marco Bersanelli (Gruber Prize in Cosmology recipient, 2006), Patrizia Caraveo (Bruno Rossi Prize recipient, 2007, 2011, 2012), Alberto Mantovani (Robert Koch Prize recipient, 2016), Fabiola Gianotti (two times CERN general director and Bruno Pontecorvo Prize recipient, 2019), as well as former Italian prime ministers Silvio Berlusconi and Bettino Craxi, and former Greek president Karolos Papoulias. The university has also been affiliated with notable faculty such as Giulio Natta (Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1963), Giuseppe Occhialini (Wolf Prize in Physics recipient, 1979), and Ugo Amaldi (Bruno Pontecorvo Prize recipient, 1995).

The University of Milan was founded in 1924 from the merger of two institutions that boasted a great tradition of medical, scientific and humanistic studies: the Accademia Scientifico-Letteraria (Scientific-Literary Academy), active since 1861, and the Istituti Clinici di Perfezionamento (Clinical Specialisation Institutes), established in 1906. By 1928, the university already had the fourth-highest number of enrolled students in Italy, after the University of Naples, Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Padua. Many of its premises are located in Città Studi (City of Studies), the university district of Milan (where the Polytechnic University of Milan is also located) which was built from 1915 onwards. The scientific Schools and Departments of the University of Milan are mostly located in the Città Studi district, while the School of Humanities, School of Law, School of Political, Economic and Social Sciences, among others, are mostly located within the historic city centre.

At the time of its foundation, there were four "traditional" Schools – Law, Humanities, Medicine, and Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences. Later, in the 1930s, the Schools of Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture were introduced, after the aggregation of the old Schools of Veterinary Medicine (1792) and Agriculture (1871).

At the end of the Second World War, the old Ospedale Maggiore di Milano (Major Hospital of Milan) building, originally named the Magna Domus Hospitalis (The Great House of the Hospital) and colloquially known as the Ca' Granda (The Great House), was assigned to the University of Milan. One of the first Italian examples of civil architecture and the main building of the Policlinico of Milan hospital complex established during the Renaissance period, it was designed by Filarete and commissioned in 1456 by Francesco I Sforza, the fourth Duke of Milan (the first Duke from the House of Sforza, which had succeeded the House of Visconti in 1450). The building had been seriously damaged by the bombings of 1943. In 1958, after a complex series of reconstruction and renovation works, it became home to the University Rector's Office, the administrative offices, and the Schools of Law and Humanities.

In the 1960s, due to the extension of compulsory school attendance and the subsequent liberalisation of access to higher education, the number of people entering Italian universities progressively increased and the University of Milan enrolled more than 60,000 students. The university broadened the range of its courses and at the same time increased its number of centres. Two new schools (the School of Pharmacy and the School of Social and Political Sciences) were established, and were based, respectively, in Città Studi and in Via Conservatorio, in the city centre of Milan. Città Studi was also the site of a new complex, intended entirely for the Biology departments, which was the work of architect Vico Magistretti.

There was also an increase in the number of agreements with the city's hospital facilities, where students from the School of Medicine receive their clinical training. In 1968, the university was occupying approximately 127,000 m² (1,370,000 sq ft); by the beginning of the 1980s this had increased to 205,000 m² (2,210,000 sq ft). In 1989 there were 22 degree-awarding schools and 75,000 enrolled students, which increased to 90,000 by 1993.