Galeazzo II Visconti raised the first fortress on this site in the mid-fourteenth century, but it was Francesco Sforza, who seized power in Milan in 1450, who rebuilt it into the brick citadel visible today, one of the largest in Europe by the sixteenth century under his successors.
Leonardo da Vinci, working for Duke Ludovico il Moro in the 1490s, painted the Sala delle Asse's trompe-l'oeil canopy of interlacing mulberry branches directly onto the ceiling, a rare surviving decorative (rather than easel) work by the artist. The castle later served military occupiers from the French to the Austrians before Milan reclaimed and restored it, with architect Luca Beltrami's major renovation between 1891 and 1905 giving the building much of its current silhouette, including a reconstructed central tower. Its museums now hold, among other collections, Michelangelo's Rondanini Pieta, a raw, unfinished marble the artist was still reworking in the final days of his life in 1564.
