Begun in the mid fourteenth century by the Visconti lords of Milan and substantially rebuilt a century later by Francesco Sforza after he established the Sforza dynasty, the Castello Sforzesco is the great red-brick fortress on the northern edge of central Milan, one of the largest urban castles in Europe and a symbol of the city for more than six centuries. The current outline of the castle dates largely from the 1450s, when Francesco Sforza commissioned the architect Filarete to design a powerful fortress with massive curtain walls, deep moats and tall corner towers. The slim, elegant central tower over the main entrance, the Torre del Filarete, was destroyed by a gunpowder explosion in the sixteenth century and reconstructed in the early twentieth. Successive Sforza dukes and their Spanish, Austrian and French successors enlarged and remodelled the castle, with major contributions by Donato Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci, who decorated the Sala delle Asse in 1498 with painted intertwined branches across the vault, a piece of court ornament that has come to be regarded as one of the most ambitious surviving fragments of Leonardo decorative work. The castle now houses a cluster of municipal museums covering ancient art, applied arts, Egyptian antiquities, prehistory, musical instruments and a fine collection of Italian Renaissance painting. The single most famous holding is Michelangelo last and unfinished sculpture, the Rondanini Pieta, displayed alone in a former hospital ward in the rear courtyard. Beyond the castle wall stretches the Parco Sempione, a large urban park laid out in the late nineteenth century on the former military exercise grounds, with avenues, lawns and ornamental ponds linking the castle to the Triumphal Arch of Peace at the far end. The Branca Tower and the Triennale design museum sit within the park. A short walk from the Duomo and from many of the central shopping streets, the castle has become a fixed reference point in the geography of Milan, used for everything from major exhibitions and concerts in its courtyards to weddings, official ceremonies and casual evening strolls along its ramparts and through its museum collections.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Piazza Castello, Milan, Italy

Website: https://www.milanocastello.it

Opening Date: 01/01/1370