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Sforza Castle Tours › The Sforza Castle Courtyards: What You Can See for Free, Courtyard by CourtyardUpdated 2026-09-10

The Sforza Castle Courtyards: What You Can See for Free, Courtyard by Courtyard

Hours, prices and access verified by the Sforza Castle Tours team — last checked 2026-09-10

The porticoes of the Corte Ducale at Sforza Castle beneath a square brick tower

The short answer

Yes, all of it, every day from 7am to 7.30pm. You walk under the clock tower into the Cortile delle Armi, the big first courtyard, and beyond it lie the Corte Ducale and the Rocchetta. On the way you pass Roman sarcophagi, two rebuilt Renaissance house fronts and a portico named for an elephant. You only need the €10 ticket when you step through a museum door.

Start under the clock: the Filarete Tower

Your visit starts under the Filarete Tower, the clock tower facing Piazza Castello. Look up before you walk through. The clock face carries a radiant sun. There is a figure of Sant'Ambrogio by Luigi Secchi, a relief of King Umberto I in Candoglia marble, and the painted arms of six Sforza.

None of it is as old as it looks. Filarete designed the first tower in 1452. It became a gunpowder store and blew up in June 1521. What you see was rebuilt by Luca Beltrami and opened on 24 September 1905. Check the lantern at the top for the carved names of eight winds.

The Info Point is inside the tower, on your right as you enter, from 9.30am Tuesday to Sunday. A guided sforzesco castle tour often meets under this clock and ends back here after the museums.

The Cortile delle Armi

The first courtyard is the biggest, and it holds the most for free. Near the walls you find late-Roman sarcophagi from the third and fourth centuries AD. Two Renaissance house fronts stand here too, brought from Via Bassano Porrone and Via Spadari.

Find the statue of San Giovanni Nepomuceno, carved by Giovanni Dugnani in 1727. Then look at the long building on one side. That is the Ospedale Spagnolo, the Spanish garrison's hospital, decorated in 1576. Since 2015 it has held the museum of the Pietà Rondanini. You can walk up to the door free; the sculpture needs the €10 ticket, which you buy at the desk in its atrium.

In summer the courtyard becomes a venue. Estate al Castello filled it with 2,300 seats and 25 free cinema nights from June to early September 2026, and it returns each summer. The events calendar carries the dates as they are announced.

The Corte Ducale and the Portico of the Elephant

The Corte Ducale was the dukes' own court. Galeazzo Maria Sforza moved in here with Bona of Savoy in 1468. Its best detail is the Portico of the Elephant, built by Benedetto Ferrini in 1473 and named for the elephant in its fresco.

Behind the portico lay the duke's apartments, joined by a staircase of low, shallow steps that let Galeazzo Maria ride his horse up to the rooms above. Those rooms now hold the Museo d'Arte Antica, with the Ducal Chapel and the Armoury. Those need a ticket. Leonardo's Sala delle Asse is in there too, but it is closed for restoration, so plan the rooms that are open before you buy.

The Rocchetta, the fortress inside the fortress

The Rocchetta was the castle's inner stronghold. Bona of Savoy made it her refuge after Galeazzo Maria was murdered on 26 December 1476. From 1477 she raised the tower that still carries her name.

Three sides of the courtyard are porticoed. Read the capitals as you walk: they carry the arms of the Visconti and the Sforza. The whole courtyard was restored between 2010 and 2013. The lift inside serves the Musical Instruments and Decorative Arts museums, which are on the ticket.

💡 Did you know? The square castle around these courtyards measures about 180 metres a side. Galeazzo II Visconti built the first fortress here in the 1360s, across the line of the medieval city wall.

A museum in the open air

The castle treats its courtyards as a collection in their own right. Its project Un Museo a cielo aperto, by Laura Basso and Giulia Soravia, gives 133 works in the courtyards and round the walls their own caption. That is 133 things to look at before you have paid for anything.

So slow down. The sarcophagi, the house fronts, the carved capitals and the statues are the castle's free exhibition, and you have twelve and a half hours a day to see them.

Outside the walls: the round towers and the Ghirlanda

Walk around the outside and you meet the two round towers, Santo Spirito and del Carmine. Bartolomeo Gadio built them in 1452 in serizzo stone. Both were lowered, in the sixteenth century and again in 1848, and Beltrami raised them back to height. The Carmine tower now holds the Biblioteca d'Arte.

On the park side stood the Ghirlanda, an outer wall begun by the Visconti and extended under Francesco Sforza between 1450 and 1466. Most of it came down from 1892. Its brick covered way survives underground, with a vault 2.80 metres high and loopholes onto the moat. You can walk it on the guided Tour dei Sotterranei, on Saturdays and Sundays at 11am, from age 10. The towers and walls are described one by one.

Keep going and Parco Sempione opens behind the castle. It covers 47 hectares of English landscape garden, laid out by Emilio Alemagna between 1890 and 1893, and like the courtyards it is free.

Free or ticketed: what needs what

PlaceFree?What you need
Piazza Castello and the clock-tower gateYesNothing
First courtyardYesNothing, 7am–7.30pm
Corte DucaleYesNothing, 7am–7.30pm
Rocchetta courtyardYesNothing, 7am–7.30pm
Pietà museumNo€10 museum ticket
Museo d'Arte Antica and the ducal roomsNo€10 museum ticket
Battlement walkNo€10, a separate ticket
Underground covered wayNoA guided tour, age 10+
Parco SempioneYesNothing
✅ Useful tip — the courtyards open at 7am, three hours before the museums. Walk them first, then be at a museum desk at 10am, and the 4.30pm last entry never touches your day.

When the free half is enough

If you have half an hour on a city walk, the courtyards are the castle for you. A Last Supper walk or a private city stroll usually gives you 20 or 30 minutes here, and that is a fair use of the time. Last Supper and castle tours are built that way.

If you want what is behind the doors, you have two choices:

  • add the €10 museum ticket yourself, at either desk, before 4.30pm;
  • book a guided visit with the ticket in the fare, from $58, and let someone else choose the rooms.

Either way, see the courtyards first. They cost you nothing and they explain the building you are about to walk into. The visiting page has the full price list.

Your free hour

Walk under the clock, find the elephant, read the capitals in the Rocchetta and leave by the park. The fares that add the museums to that walk are on Sforza Castle Tours.

Walks that cross the courtyards