The Sforza Castle Museums

Inside the walls the Comune di Milano runs eight museums, and one €10 ticket opens all of them for the day. They range from Michelangelo's last sculpture to the studio where Italian electronic music began. This page takes each in turn: what it holds, where it is, and what is closed at the moment. Sforza Castle tickets bought with a guided tour carry the same ticket inside the fare.

Eight museums on one ticket

The ticket gives one entry to each museum section on the day it is issued, and the last entry everywhere is 4.30pm. It works at either desk: the main one at the Museo d'Arte Antica, or the one in the Pietà Rondanini atrium.

The Museo Pietà Rondanini

Michelangelo worked on this marble for the last ten years of his life and was still carving it a few days before he died, in February 1564, aged 89. He kept changing his mind. Christ's body was thinned, the head lowered, the arms reset; a broken right arm from an earlier version still hangs free. It was his own, made for nobody else.

After his death it vanished for centuries, surfaced in 1807 in the Rondinini collection in Rome, was dismissed by one appraiser as a modern work, and was bought by the Comune di Milano in 1952. Since 2 May 2015 it has had its own museum in the Ospedale Spagnolo, the hospital the Spanish garrison built in 1576. You can walk all the way round it. The vault above still carries the Apostles' Creed, painted to comfort sick soldiers.

The Museo d'Arte Antica and the Armoury

Around 400 sculptures from the fifth to the sixteenth century, laid out in the ground-floor rooms of the ducal apartments. Highlights include the Lapide dei Consoli of 1178 and the equestrian tomb of Bernabò Visconti. The same route passes through the Ducal Chapel of 1473, the Sala delle Colombine and the Armoury in room XIV, with European arms from the late fourteenth century to the nineteenth.

The Pinacoteca

Milanese and Lombard painting from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, with Venetian and Flemish works among it: Foppa, Bramantino, Luini, Mantegna, Bellini, Correggio and Canaletto. The star is Mantegna's altarpiece for Santa Maria in Organo in Verona, signed and dated 15 August 1497, in room XXIII. Room 20 is reached only by six steps.

The Decorative Arts museum and the Trivulzio tapestries

Italian ceramics from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, medieval ivories and goldsmiths' work, bronzes and Murano and Bohemian glass. The room people remember is the Sala della Balla, hung with the twelve Trivulzio tapestries of the months. Bramantino designed them for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, and they were woven in Vigevano and finished in 1509. The year runs from March to February; the patron and his wife appear in September, and Bramante's portrait is hidden in August.

The Museum of Musical Instruments

About 900 instruments from Europe and beyond, from the Ruckers double virginal to a viola by Giovanni Granzino. One room holds the RAI's Studio di Fonologia, where Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna began making electronic music in 1955. It worked until 1983, and you can listen to its recordings at the stations in the room.

The Furniture and Wooden Sculpture museum

Six centuries of furniture, from the fifteenth century to Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass, set among paintings and objects of the same date. Look for the Stipo Passalacqua of 1613 in room XVIII, a cabinet of ivory, rock crystal and gilt bronze built around a moral about the senses leading reason astray.

The Galleria Antico Egitto

A renewed display, on the same ticket, with mummies, sarcophagi, amulets and ushabti figures. Part of it comes from Achille Vogliano's excavations in the Fayum in the 1930s, including a statue of the pharaoh Amenemhat III. Groups must book an entry time; you can simply walk in.

The prehistory section, closed for now

The Museo Archeologico's prehistory and protohistory section is shut for re-display. Its best-known piece, the Warrior's Tomb from Sesto Calende, found by a farmer in 1867, is off view until it reopens.

What else is closed right now

How to plan the museums in one visit

Start at the Pietà Rondanini, because it is the one thing most people came for and it is quickest in the morning. Then cross to the Corte Ducale for the ducal rooms and the Arca di Bernabò, take the lift to the Pinacoteca, and finish in the Rocchetta with the instruments and the tapestries. That is about two and a half hours at a steady pace. If you have only ninety minutes, a guided tour does the Pietà and the ducal rooms and leaves you the ticket for the rest.

Reserve your museum entry

A reserved ticket for every museum in the castle, with an app commentary in six languages on your own phone.

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