In the eleventh century it was the seat of the municipal institutions. It reached its peak in 1330-36.
The decay of the Palace began with Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who moved his residence to the Castle. In the first half of the sixteenth century, however, with the fall of the government of the Sforza and the French invasion, the court moved again into the current Royal Palace.
Only with the Spanish period, however, the Royal Palace had a new life, thanks to the governor Ferrante Gonzaga, who chose it as the residence of his government and the ducal court. It was so named Gonzaga Palace.
In 1598 he was also made the first Court Theatre. It was the beginning of a vocation that ended in the eighteenth century with the final construction of the Teatro alla Scala. In the court theater young Mozart had a performance . The theater, all in wood, was destroyed by fire in 1736. Today, in its place there is the Hall of the Caryatids.

The Royal Palace has a neo-classical style that dates back to 1778, when the architect Giuseppe Piermarini turned it into a residence for the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria.

he interiors were once furnished with furnitures and painted by Martin Knoller and Julian Traballesi and formed the model for the dwellings of the Milanese nobility of the time.
In 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte, Royal-Ducal Palace was renamed Nazionale and became the seat of the main governing bodies of the new Cisalpine Republic

In 1859 it became the seat of the new governorship of the city of Milan, led by Massimo D'Azeglio. With the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, the palace became the direct ownership of the Savoia royal family . Umberto I just used the Palace of Milan. The son King Vittorio Emanuele III attended the Milanese palace only on official occasions. The last official reception attended in 1906 for the Universal Exhibition.
In 1919, as head of state, President Wilson was the last to visit the palace.

In 1920, the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III gave the use of the building to the City of Milan, who bought it in 1965 and allocated to home office, including the Civic Museum of Contemporary Art.
The Civic Museum is located on the second floor of the Royal Palace and is divided into two sections. The first section opens with the bronze "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space" by Umberto Boccioni. Traces the Italian art from the beginning of the twentieth century after World War II. It includes many works by Giacomo Balla, Achille Funi, Sironi and Amedeo Modigliani. Metaphysical painting is represented by De Chirico. Among the artists of the main currents arose between the two wars are necessary Giorgio Morandi, Carlo Carrà, Arturo Martini and Lucio Fontana.

The second section documents the paintings of the "50 to 80 years" 80, with works by Burri, Vedova and includes the Jucker collection, acquired in 1992.

The Royal Palace is today an important cultural center, home to exhibitions. The building has an important role with regard to art in Milan, as demonstrated by the great success of the exhibitions of recent years. The key issue is the exhibition opened at the Royal Palace in 2009 to mark the centenary of the birth of Futurism. Since November 2013, a wing of the building houses the collections of the Museum of the Duomo of Milan. In any Italian community, the place of political power and the religious is almost the same. The two institutions are facing a time, separated by a square, almost forming a perpendicular, sometimes from side to form a team. In the city of Milan, the two powers do not form either a perpendicular or a team: they have been separated by the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.