Politecnico di Milano was founded in 1863 by Francesco Brioschi and describes itself as a public scientific-technological university training engineers, architects and industrial designers. It lists campuses at Milano Leonardo and Milano Bovisa, and in Cremona, Lecco, Mantova, Piacenza and Xi’an. The XJTU-POLIMI Joint School in Xi’an, a partnership with Xi’an Jiaotong University that opened on 7 September 2019, is described as Polimi’s first campus outside Italy.
Teaching is organised in four schools: Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering; Design; Civil, Environmental and Land Management Engineering; and Industrial and Information Engineering. Research is organised in 12 departments. In 2025/2026 Polimi had 49,395 enrolled students, including 37,227 engineers, 7,375 architects and 4,793 designers, plus 2,240 PhD students, and 9,940 international students. Donatella Sciuto is Rector.