Sforza Castle

The guided tour of Milan's Castello Sforzesco leads you to discover the history of one of the most beautiful castles in Italy, the seat of power before the Visconti and later the Sforza.

Built on an earlier Visconti nucleus, the Sforzesco Castle was built by Francesco Sforza in the fifteenth century, calling from Florence the architect Antonio Averlino known as Il Filarete, who will also entrust the Ca ’Granda project. During the duchy of Ludovico il Moro the Sforza Castle further embellished thanks to the interventions of Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci, who frescoed several rooms of the ducal apartment and of which today remains the Sala delle Asse.

In the sixteenth century the castle came under Spanish rule, which used it as a military citadel and provided it with a new star-shaped defensive system designed by Vincenzo Seregni. The Sforzesco Castle retained its military destination even under the Habsburg and Napoleonic rule. It was then, however, precisely Napoleon who ordered the destruction of the building, in agreement with the Milanese population that saw in the Castle the symbol of a centuries-old foreign tyranny. Antolini's project for the new Foro Bonaparte dates back to this period and will be largely replaced with the creation of Parco Sempione.

Despite some losses, the Sforzesco Castle survived the destruction and was restored at the beginning of the twentieth century by the architect Luca Beltrami, giving it a more original appearance. Finally, the Castello Sforzesco passed to the Municipality of Milan and is still home to some of the most important museums in the city, including the Pinacoteca, the Egyptian Museum, the Museum of Ancient Art, the Museum of Musical Instruments, the Library of Art, the Historical Archive and Trivulziana Library, the Bertarelli Collection of Prints.