The Visconti castle of Voghera stood on the boundary between the town, to the north, and the countryside, to the south. Some documents trace a fortress back to the time of the Berengars, between the ninth and tenth centuries; the castle seen today was built in the fourteenth century by the Visconti, lords of Milan, and in 1372 it was the residence of Galeazzo II, who to pay for the works demanded twenty thousand gold florins from the territory. It followed the pattern of Visconti castles: a four-sided plan, an inner courtyard with arcades, a tower at each corner; at Voghera, however, one side is closed by a plain wall. Two more towers stood over the two entrances, north and south, and around it ran a moat with two drawbridges.
What to see
Over the centuries the castle has been mutilated: the corner towers were lowered, and in 1647 the French pulled down the tower over the north entrance, the one facing today's piazza Castello. In the eighteenth century the north wing was turned into a residential palace; in the nineteenth the moat was filled in. On the west side the wall raised after 1382 between the castle and the Santo Stefano gate remains.
In 1997, when many layers of plaster were removed in one room, fragments of frescoes attributed to Bramantino re-emerged: they show the Muses, framed by white marble pilasters and red porphyry bases, in front of the volumes of a city painted behind them. The room is thought to have been a studiolo.
Visiting
From the Napoleonic period the castle was used as a prison. The restorations, begun in the nineteen-twenties and finished at the start of the two-thousands, made its opening possible; it is state property and is opened periodically for exhibitions and events, to be checked with Voghera town council.
Our editors' tip
In March 1400 Manuel Palaiologos, emperor of the East, passed through here on his way to Milan. And in 1604 the castle was described as having six towers, many lodgings and a garden of ten perches: the space that is now piazza Castello.
