Sforza Castle Map: Gates, Courtyards and Ticket Desks

Finding the castle is easy. Finding the right door, desk or meeting point inside it is where people lose half an hour. The fortress is three courtyards deep, it has two museum ticket offices in two different buildings, and the tours that visit it meet in six different places, some of them a kilometre away. This page puts them in order. Choose your Sforza Castle tour first and then find its line in the table below.

Piazza Castello and the Filarete gate

The castle faces the city across Piazza Castello, the semicircular square with the big round fountain. Via Dante runs straight from here to the Duomo. The way in is under the Filarete Tower, the tall clock tower on the centre line; the two round towers stand at the corners of the same front. On the right as you pass under the tower is the Info Point. Almost every tour that meets at the castle meets on this side of the gate.

The three courtyards in order

1. The Cortile delle Armi — the huge first courtyard behind the gate, open and free from 7am to 7.30pm. The Pietà Rondanini museum is in the long building on its left-hand side as you walk in.
2. The Corte Ducale — through the far side, to the right: the ducal residence, with the main museum entrance under the Portico of the Elephant.
3. The Rocchetta — to the left of the Corte Ducale, behind high walls: the inner fortress, with the lift to the instruments and decorative arts.

Two ticket desks, and which one is yours

The museum ticket is the same at either desk. Go to the Pietà desk if the sculpture is your first stop, and to the main desk if you need a wheelchair or an audio guide.

Both desks close at 4.30pm, an hour before the rooms empty. If you arrive later than that, the courtyards are still open and free until 7.30pm, but you will not get into a museum. On a free first Sunday the queue forms at the main desk first, so the Pietà desk is often the quicker of the two. Either way, keep your ticket: it gives one entry to each museum section for the rest of the day, and staff check it at every door.

Where each tour meets

Four of these meet on Piazza Castello itself. The Last Supper combinations meet at Santa Maria delle Grazie or at Cadorna and reach the castle on foot later in the tour, so do not wait for them at the fountain.

The Filarete Tower is the easiest meeting point in the city to find, and also the most crowded. Guides there hold up a sign or a coloured flag with the operator's name, and several groups gather at the same moment, especially at the top of the hour. Arrive ten minutes early and look for your operator's name rather than for a tour group. If your tour meets at the Autostradale office, that is a ticket counter on the square, not a guide: you swap your voucher there and walk in on your own.

The Info Point and the battlements

The Info Point in the Filarete Tower is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9.30am to 5.30pm. It sells the Merlate Panoramiche ticket, and the rampart walk leaves from here every twenty minutes in groups of up to 25. The castle's own guided museum visits also meet here: on Saturdays at 10.45am for the 11am tour in English.

Out the back: Parco Sempione

Behind the castle lies Parco Sempione, 47 hectares of English-style garden laid out between 1890 and 1893. In it you will find the Arena of 1806, the Liberty Acquario Civico of 1906, the Palazzo dell'Arte that houses the Triennale, and Gio Ponti's Torre Branca of 1933, 108.60 metres tall. It is free and open, and it makes an easy hour after the museums.

Getting to Piazza Castello

Buses 50, 57, 58 and 85 also serve the castle. Driving is not worth it: the square is pedestrian and inside Area C.

What stands around the castle

• Via Dante and the Duomo — a straight pedestrian street leads from the fountain to Piazza Cordusio and on to the cathedral.
• Cadorna station — on the south-west side, where one of the Last Supper tours meets.
• Santa Maria delle Grazie — to the south-west, where Leonardo's Last Supper is, and where most combined tours begin.
• The Triennale and the Arena — inside the park behind.