Italy Guide
Lombardy and the lakes
Castello Sforzesco
Address: Via Dante
With its crenellated towers and fortified walls, the red-brick castle Castello Sforzesco 
www.milanocastello.it is one of Milan's most striking landmarks. The result of numerous rebuildings, it was begun by the Viscontis, destroyed by mobs rebelling against their regime in 1447, and rebuilt by their successors, the Sforzas. Under Lodovico Sforza the court became one of the most powerful, luxurious and cultured of the Renaissance, renowned for its ostentatious wealth and court artists like Leonardo and Bramante. Just over a century ago it was converted into a series of museums.
The ticket office Opening time: Tues– Sun 9am–5.30pmPrice: combined ticket €3, on your right as you enter the Corte Ducale, gives access to the Museo d'Arte Antica, a succession of rooms containing an extensive collection of ancient artefacts saved from the city's churches and archeological excavations. More interesting than these, though, are the castle rooms themselves, especially the Sala delle Asse, designed by Leonardo da Vinci; his black-and-white preparatory sketches were discovered in the 1950s. After some rather dull armoury you reach the museum's star exhibit: Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà, which the artist worked on for the last nine years of his life. It's an unfinished but oddly powerful work; much of the marble is unpolished and a third arm, indicating a change of position for Christ's body, hangs limply from a block of stone to his right.
Upstairs, the Museo delle Arti Decorative exhibits furniture and decorative arts through the ages, including fascinating early works by the great twentieth-century Milanese designer, Gio Ponte. The Torre Falconiere (the Falconry Tower) next door holds the castle's art collection containing numerous paintings by Lombard artists such as Foppa and Bramantino, as well as minor Venetian works, including some Canalettos. The best are all grouped together in Room XIII and include Antonello da Messina's St Benedict, originally part of a five-piece polyptych, of which two panels are in the Uffizi in Florence.
Across the courtyard, in the castle cellars, are the smaller Egyptian collection, with displays of mummies, sarcophagi and papyrus fragments from The Book of the Dead, and the deftly lit prehistoric collection – an assortment of finds from the Iron Age burial grounds of the Golasecca civilization.