Torre del Bramante

The master tower of Vigevano's Sforza castle soars 55.72 metres above Piazza Ducale, its tiered Renaissance body crowned by an octagonal belvedere and a Baroque spire.

Why it matters

Vigevano’s castle tower is a striking example of this civic and military form. A 1198 document, issued when the consuls of Pavia raised Vigevano to the rank of borgo, records an undertaking to build a tower on the castle site. At the end of the fifteenth century Ludovico Maria Sforza, il Moro, had the ailing medieval tower partly demolished and rebuilt it in the slender, elegant language of the Renaissance, modelling its upper storeys on the Torre del Filarete of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. The new forms are traditionally attributed to Donato Bramante; a plaque at the base commemorates Ludovico’s gift of a new “bellissima torre” to the city.

What to notice

The tower stacks three receding tiers, echoing the Filarete Tower in Milan. The projecting terrace, ringed by Ghibelline swallow-tail merlons, stands about 31 metres above the castle courtyard. The terrace overlooks Piazza Ducale, the arcades, the cathedral’s Baroque facade, the roofs of the historic centre and the landscape toward the Ticino. Above the terrace, three further floors lead to the bell chamber and the crowning cupolino, an octagonal Renaissance drum finished with a late-seventeenth-century Baroque spire. The exterior was once frescoed.

Context and history

The medieval tower’s shape and height are unknown; bells and a weight-driven clock were installed by the fifteenth century. A seventeenth-century intervention added the copper cupolino that still terminates the spire. The tower’s civic role is also reflected in its clock and bells, including a seventeenth-century bell, and in its appearance in Vigevano’s municipal coat of arms. Restoration campaigns have repaired and consolidated the masonry over the centuries.