Following the 2026 Winter Olympics, the Paralympics are held at multiple sites across Lombardy and Northeast Italy: from the opening ceremony at the Arena di Verona to the closing ceremony in Cortina d’Ampezzo, with competitions in Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Val di Fiemme, Livigno, and Valtellina-Bormio. This time, we explore photography exhibitions in Lombardy dedicated to the Olympics, winter sports and snowy landscapes. Most of them are part of the Cultural Olympiad programme for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Let’s start with an exhibition that isn’t exactly photographic but is still worth mentioning. In Milan, The Olympic Games™. A 3000-Year History, hosted by Fondazione Luigi Rovati, provides an in-depth exploration of the history, protagonists and values of athletic competitions from antiquity to the present day. It draws comparisons between archaeological finds and contemporary memorabilia, linking the ancient Greek competitions to the Winter Games Milano Cortina2026, illustrating how the values of excellence, respect and friendship have remained unchanged over time. A major centrepiece is the Tomba delle Olimpiadi (530–520 BC), now under the responsibility of the Parco archeologico di Cerveteri e Tarquinia (PACT. Discovered in 1958, just before the Rome 1960 Olympics, the tomb is named after the sporting scenes decorating its walls.
Intesa Sanpaolo presents the exhibition The Road to Cortina. VII Olympic Winter Games 1956 at the Gallerie d’Italia-Milano museum, featuring images produced by the Publifoto Milano news agency that captured the highlights of the Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1956.
Publifoto produced over 100 reportages and 1,400 photographs, employing six of its most experienced photographers. The sports department, whose archive is preserved at the CSAC of the University of Parma, was mainly involved, as were the news department and the one dedicated to the corporate clients, who invested heavily in event-related communication.
The exhibition documents both the athletic competitions, the construction of the infrastructure and moments in the protagonists’ daily lives. It highlights how the event was a pivotal moment in Italy’s economic miracle, marking the nation’s return to the international scene after World War II. For the first time, the combination of organisational efficiency and technological innovation, such as live television broadcasting, transformed the public’s enjoyment of sport.
White Entropy by Jacopo Di Cera is on display at the PhotoSquare space at Milan Malpensa Airport, an international crossroads. Through an exhibition and site-specific installation, the artist invites visitors to slow down and observe. The exhibition transforms the landscape into consciousness and altitude into thought, thanks to the artist’s zenithal shots that flip the point of view. The mountain is the protagonist, recounted in a dialogue between art, photography and sustainability.
From Mont Blanc to Roccaraso, Cortina d’Ampezzo or Madonna di Campiglio, Di Cera offers an unexpected interpretation based on the encounter between two opposing yet complementary forces: white, which symbolises purity, silence and apparent immobility, and entropy, which is understood both as a physical principle and as a metaphor for time, loss and transformation.
The Alessia Paladini Gallery in Milan is presenting Icons & Ice. Photographs by Irene Kung & Riccardo Scibetta, that intertwines two perspectives, creating a dialogue between urban icons and sporting imagery, the permanence of architecture and the fugacity of events. Alongside Irene Kung’s architectural photographs are Riccardo Scibetta’s visions reworked in the series Glitch Pop – Visioni da una TV Malata. Here, the image of sport is a memory mediated by the screen, crossed by interference, chromatic deviations and fragmentation. The “glitch” is understood both as a visual effect and as a poetics, emphasising the fragile nature of contemporary memory, between digital compression, sudden appearances and disappearances.
A Visionary at Altitude – N vijionar sö alalt (the title is in Italian and Ladin, the language of the Dolomites) is a project comprising exhibitions at the Ikonos Art Gallery and the Lumen-Museum of Mountain Photography, whose common thread is the visionary thinking of Stefano Zardini, who invites visitors to embark on a journey through places, noises and silences, and men and women of the mountains.
The complete trilogy is on display at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, comprising: The Pioneers’ Passion, Snowland and Tracce – Lasciare che l’occhio squarti il paesaggio, in which the snow looks like an artist’s canvas, marked by human passage.
The Sense of Snow, at the MUDEC – Museum of Cultures, which is in what used to be Milan’s photo district, explores snow, in its infinite forms, as a lens to view the changes in our times and discover how different cultures have interpreted it. More than 150 works and objects are on display, including ethnographic items, scientific evidence, paintings, photographs and videos, taking visitors on a journey from the geometry of snow crystals to European and Japanese artistic imagery, and even mountain overtourism. One of the featured authors is Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, an amateur photographer and researcher who took the first microphotograph of an ice crystal in 1885.
Scenari Alpini explores the relationship between local communities and Lombardy’s mountain environment, with seven projects by visual artists who won a call for projects promoted by MUNAF, the National Museum of Photography in Cinisello Balsamo, which is hosting the exhibition.
The exhibition analyses themes ranging from the revival of traditional crafts to reflections on the links between the transformation of the region and major sporting events. It opens with Rhônegletscher 02 by Walter Niedemayr.
Finally, you can move on to Valtellina, which is another hub for Olympic and Paralympic competitions. But first, take a short detour to Val Chiavenna to enjoy the view of the Acquafraggia Waterfalls. Even Leonardo da Vinci was impressed by their beauty, and he mentioned them in his Codex Atlanticus.
The exhibition VETTE. Storie di Sport e Montagne, which explores the complex relationship between sport, the Alpine region and society, is located in Teglio (Sondrio). It is hosted by the Museo Nazionale Palazzo Besta. Through extensive collaboration between cultural institutions, the narrative explores how winter sports have radically transformed the identity of local communities, marking their transition from a subsistence economy to a focus on modern leisure. Vette intertwines the stories of great Olympic and Paralympic athletes with those of Alpine communities. These stories, traditions and contradictions come together in the exhibition to form a mosaic of collective memory, where global and local history interact. A reflection on the relationship between natural and man-made spaces is made all the more compelling by sporting epics in the spirit of the ancient values of Olympism.
Paola Sammartano
The Olympic Games™. A 3000-Year History
From November 26, 2025 to March 22, 2026
Fondazione Luigi Rovati
Corso Venezia 52, 20121 Milan
Italy
https://www.fondazioneluigirovati.org/en/
La strada per Cortina. VII Giochi Olimpici Invernali 1956
From February 6 to May 3, 2026
Gallerie d’Italia – Milano, Museo di Intesa Sanpaolo
Piazza della Scala 6, 20121 Milan
Italy
https://gallerieditalia.com/en/milan/
White Entropy di Jacopo Di Cera
From December 5, 2025 to March 31, 2026
Spazio espositivo PhotoSquare all’interno dell’Aeroporto di Milano Malpensa, Terminal 1
21010 Ferno (VA)
Italy
Icons & Ice
From February 5 to March 22, 2026
Alessia Paladini Gallery
Via Pietro Maroncelli, 11 – 20154 Milan
Italy
https://www.alessiapaladinigallery.it/en-gb
A Visionary at Altitude – N vijionar sö alalt
From February 13 to April 13, 2026
Fabbrica del Vapore
Via Giulio Cesare Procaccini, 4, 20154 Milan
https://www.fabbricadelvapore.org/#
The Sense of Snow. Peoples, Ancient Art, and Contemporary Perspectives
From February 12 to June 28, 2026
Mudec – Museo delle Culture
Via Tortona 56, 20144 Milan
https://www.mudec.it/en/
Scenari Alpini
Fom February 1 to May 03, 2026
Museo Nazionale di Fotografia
Villa Ghirlanda Silva
Via Giovanni Frova 10, 20092 Cinisello Balsamo, MI
Italy
https://munaf.it/en/
Vette. Storie di sport e montagne
From January 28 to August 30, 2026
Palazzo Besta
Via Fabio Besta 8, 23036 Teglio, SO
https://www.storiedisportemontagne.it/
https://museilombardia.cultura.gov.it/
