Some pieces of note at the Castello include "Rondanini Pietà". Michelangelo started his career with a Pietà carving at the age of 25 (now in St. Peter’s in Rome). And while the master was famous for not finishing his statues, in the case of the Pietà found here, it was not his fault when, at the age of 89 in 1564, he was struck down (probably by a stroke) literally while chipping away at the sculpture.

Be sure to see the funerary monument to Faston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, Marshall of France, ruler of the French Milan Duchy, post-humus hero of the 1512 Battle of Ravennna, and Louis XII’s nephew. The tomb’s ethereally sculpted elements, carved in 1510 by Bambaia, have all been scattered. Commissioned by King Francis I for the young hero, Bambaia executed an effigy of the warrior lying in state and beautiful high-relief panels. When the French pulled out of Milanese affairs in 1522, the tomb was left unfinished. The pieces were sold off and wound up in Turin, London, and the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.

On the first floor toward the right wing, you will find a curious little portrait by the Milan-born Giuseppe Archimboldo, who has a very distinctive style of painting metaphoric "portraits." Up close, the painting looks to be a greengrocer’s dream or a page out of a florists’ catalogue, but moving away from it, a human head appears. It was made entirely of fruits and flowers of the season to personify spring in a human profile.

Along the same wall, you will find a "Madonna and Child", an early Bellini piece executed between 1468 and 1470. Mary is depicted with touching detail, wearing a pearl-trimmed pink shawl whilst the infant Jesus gazes at a lemon in his hand. Just around the corner from this piece is another Bellini artwork of a poet laureate, whose portrait shows an almost Flemish attention to detail in the hair and eyes of the subject.

Also housed in the Castello is Bramantino’s "Trivulzio Tapestries of the Twelve Months," designed in 1503 and named for the man who commissioned them, General Gian Giacomo Trivulzio.

This is open daily between 9am and 5:30pm. Although admission to the museum is free, there are special conducted tours, often in the evenings, that get you into the many non-museum sections of the castle normally closed to the public, and if you’re lucky, sometimes up to the battlements themselves.

The massive main portal features a welcome area, where the occassional invader could experience the pleasures of being bathed in boiling oil and fired upon, whilst battering down the massive gate. Just to the left of the entrance is the castle bookshop, featuring mainly art books.

Leonardo da Vinci, who spent quite a few years in Milano working on (among others) his Last Supper, didn't fail to meddle in the construction of the castle, aiding in designing some of the defences. Nearly demolished in late 19th century, the castle nontheless pulled through and was fully restored to its current state by 1905.

The castle is very charming in itself, particularly when you enter from the front door and try to imagine the knights and horses lining up in the square court inside.

Besides, there is an almost unknown museum in the castle (the entrance is near the northern gate) that contains many weapons from the middle ages and the Renaissance but, most of all, some rooms with frescoes on the ceilings conceived by Leonardo Da Vinci and the mysterious Pietà Rondanini by Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Michelangelo sculpted three pietà; the most famous is located in the St. Peter's church in Vatican City. The one displayed in this museum is a willingly unfinished masterpiece Michelangelo sculpted in 1563, one year before his death. No other artist has ever worked on marble at 88 years old.

In this essential, dramatic, mature work, the shapes of Jesus and Mary actually seem to come out of the raw stone. While the scene is very well composed, the attention is drawn directly on Mary, looking exhausted by the pain, feeling like she cannot hold Jesus's dead body any longer and will shortly drop it.

Jesus's dead body stands in an innatural posture underlying his death and Mary's desperation.

The entrance to the museum is free.