Prada Just Opened an Eight-Floor Universe in Milan

As if we needed another reason to be excited about Milan next week. Prada Galleria has officially opened inside Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, transforming the historic home of Fratelli Prada into an eight-floor world of fashion, art, food, archives, architecture and very Prada ideas.

And with JDEED heading to Milan Fashion Week, we’ll be taking you inside and showing it to you live next week.

This isn't simply a bigger Prada store. Under the direction of Miuccia Prada, the project brings together more than a century of the house's history and the many things that have shaped its universe beyond clothes, from art and architecture to cinema, culture and sport. In other words, you might want to leave yourself a few hours.

It Starts Where Prada Started

There couldn't really be a more appropriate address. The project sits inside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, where Fratelli Prada was founded in 1913. The original Prada Donna boutique has now expanded underground, almost doubling its display space and bringing womenswear together with travel, home and beauty, while retaining historic murals and archival objects.

Across the Galleria sits Prada Uomo, but here's where things get more interesting: the two stores are now connected underground. The new Passaggio Segreto, or secret passage, isn't simply a convenient shortcut between menswear and womenswear. It contains an exhibition of lesser-known moments from Prada's history, looking back at some of the experiments and early ideas that helped form the house we know today.

A Prada secret tunnel beneath the Galleria? Obviously we're going in.

Possibly the part we're most excited about is Pradasphere, the first permanent exhibition dedicated to Prada.

Located on the Galleria's piano nobile, the exhibition travels from the founding of Fratelli Prada in 1913 all the way to the present, pulling together objects from the archive alongside more than a century of Prada's relationship with fashion, art, architecture, film, culture and sport. Some of the material is being exhibited publicly for the first time. Previous versions of Pradasphere travelled to London and Hong Kong in 2014 and Shanghai in 2023, but Milan now becomes its permanent home.

For anyone who has spent years watching Miuccia Prada make ugly things beautiful, beautiful things strange and fashion feel considerably more intellectual than it probably needed to be, there is plenty to unpack here.

Thankfully, Prada understands that eight floors of culture require carbohydrates. Above Prada Uomo sits Marchesi 1824, the historic Milanese pastry shop, bringing its cakes, chocolates and very particular shade of pistachio green into the experience.

So theoretically, you can shop Prada, disappear through a secret underground passage, look through more than a century of Prada history and then have a pastry. A very reasonable afternoon in Milan.

And It Keeps Going...

Higher up, things become considerably more private. The Studio consists of intimate salon-style rooms for personalised shopping by appointment, alongside a central space for private events.

Then comes The Appartamento, which imagines an 18th-century apartment filled with antique Italian furniture alongside an exhibition curated by photographic artist Andreas Gursky. Looking out towards the Galleria's mosaics, the invitation-only space will host private dinners and special occasions.

At the top remains Osservatorio Fondazione Prada, dedicated to experimentation around contemporary image-making, technology and culture.

It means that within one building you can move from a Prada handbag to an archival exhibition, contemporary photography, an 18th-century-inspired apartment, experimental art and a very good pastry. Which, when you think about it, is probably the most Prada way possible to explain Prada.

Prada Galleria is particularly interesting for not attempting to reduce more than a century of the house into a neat retrospective. Instead, it feels like entering all the different things Prada has been interested in over the years at once. Fashion is there, obviously, but so are art, architecture, photography, food, history and experimentation. The result is a literal physical Prada universe.

JDEED will be in Milan next week, and we'll be heading inside Prada Galleria to show you the new space live. Stay tuned.

More info on Prada.com