Perhaps unsurprisingly, Salone del Mobile has an outsized effect on its host city. According to Milan Design (Eco) System, a study published last year by the furniture fair with Politecnico di Milano, the event generated €275m in income for the city in 2024. The report examined factors beyond the trade fair, incorporating all of the ancillary events that take place during the week of Salone del Mobile and help to make the city a global capital for the design industry.

None of this is happenstance. “The fair itself is about business but it’s supported by our cultural events that are about contextualising design,” says Maria Porro, Salone del Mobile’s president, when Monocle meets her outside Milan’s Castello Sforzesco. We are here to discuss the cultural events that Salone del Mobile is commissioning and curating around this year’s trade fair. “It’s a very long-lasting project – this idea of hosting cultural events and special exhibitions in the city.”

Indeed, Salone del Mobile has been venturing beyond the trade hall almost since its inception in 1961. In 1965 it commissioned a showcase called Retrospective Exhibition on Furniture Design in Italy from 1945 to the Present, a museum-like display exploring 20 years of Italian design. But the momentum of its cultural programme picked up in earnest in 1987, and almost every year since, there have been major design-minded exhibitions.

There have been partnerships with the Triennale di Milano design museum, which held a retrospective on the work of Marva Griffin, the head of Salone Satellite, last year. (“We give young designers a platform because talent deserves to be seen,” says Griffin.) There have also been collaborations with established filmmakers such as David Lynch and, this year, Paolo Sorrentino.

The headline act of 2025, however, is an installation called “Mother”, created in collaboration with Milan Municipality’s culture department. Located in Castello Sforzesco, at the Museo della Pietà Rondanini (a space dedicated to Michelangelo’s unfinished final statue), it’s a 30-minute sequence of music, lights, and images. Created by prominent US playwright and stage director Robert Wilson, it’s supported by a soundtrack of music by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. “The ‘Rondanini Pietà’ is one of Milan’s most important artworks,” says Porro. “Can lighting and architecture enhance its accessibility? Yes. That’s why we called upon Robert Wilson to explore this.”

Wilson’s multisensory work will be repeated on loop and be kept open to the public until 18 May, in an attempt to entice both visitors and locals to the space. “We want to show that [the right companies] can help people to discover this masterpiece,” says Porro. “We are underlining the role of design firms in creating good projects that can attract visitors to a public museum.”

Aside from using one of the US’s best-known playwrights to attract people to a museum in the city, Porro is also concerned about the legacy that such initiatives leave. Salone del Mobile has also commissioned a work by UK contemporary artist and designer Es Devlin at the Pinacoteca di Brera, a university, library, and observatory in central Milan. Called the “Library of Light”, it consists of a revolving cylindrical sculpture that functions as a bookcase at the heart of the 17th-century Cortile d’Onore. Measuring 18 metres in diameter, it will contain 2,000 books exploring our humanity. As well as being an impressive undertaking intended to offer a place to stop and read during Milan Design Week, it’s also part of an effort to create a legacy.

“We’re gifting the city the installation because we believe that a creative city needs long-term projects and we don’t just want to be using the space as a location,” says Porro. “Salone has been shaping Milan for more than 60 years and we want every cultural initiative that we undertake to give back, leave a legacy, and start discussions on the question, ‘What is good design?’”

For Salone del Mobile, this isn’t just about financial returns or even generating interest: it’s also about nourishing the cultural life of the city.