Sforza Castle
— — the red brick the dukes left standing.
Not only on a wall.
“The fortress at the western edge of Milan's old centre, between the Duomo and Parco Sempione. Built by Francesco Sforza in the mid 1400s on the foundations of an older Visconti castle, and rebuilt enough times since that the brick reads as one continuous wall. The central Filarete Tower watches the long axis through the park to the Arco della Pace at its far end. Inside the courtyards now: museums, a Michelangelo Pietà left unfinished at his death. Office workers cut through it on the way to lunch. The Duomo gets the cameras; the castle gets the afternoons.
Sforza Castle, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Sforza Castle stands at the western edge of Milan's historic centre, between the Duomo a kilometre to the east and Parco Sempione opening out behind it to the northwest. Francesco Sforza, the condottiero who became Duke of Milan in 1450, ordered its construction the same year on the site of a 14th-century Visconti fortress. His son Galeazzo Maria and grandson Ludovico il Moro extended it through the 1480s, drawing on Leonardo da Vinci and Donato Bramante for decoration and fortification. The plan is roughly square, around 200 metres on a side, with four corner towers and the central Filarete Tower over the main gate.
The defining material is Lombard red brick, the warm clay-brown that runs through much of Milan's older fabric. The Filarete Tower at the centre, rebuilt by Luca Beltrami between 1900 and 1905 from surviving drawings after the original was destroyed in a 1521 gunpowder explosion, rises about 70 metres above the main gate. Two round artillery towers flank the front corners, their lower-slung profile shaped to absorb cannon fire; the rear corners are square. Inside the inner Corte Ducale the brick gives way to Candoglia marble around the doorways, the same pale pink-veined stone the Visconti and Sforza patrons used for the Duomo.
The castle is open daily for the courtyards, ramparts, and moat path, with no ticket required; people walk through it as the natural route from Via Dante to Parco Sempione. The museums inside, run by the Comune di Milano, share a single combined ticket and are closed on Mondays. The system includes the Museum of Ancient Art with Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà, the Pinacoteca, the Museum of Musical Instruments, the Egyptian Museum, and the Achille Bertarelli Print Collection. The Sala delle Asse, with its mulberry-canopy ceiling painted by Leonardo da Vinci around 1498, has been under long-running restoration with limited access. Metro Line 1 stops at Cairoli Castello.