# General view [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ARCHITECT, Italian]() - Date: 1351-1400 - Technique: Photo ## Commentary The Castello Visconteo, the main residence of the Visconti family, was substantially built by Galeazzo II Visconti \(c. 1320-1378\) and completed by his son Gian Galeazzo \(1351-1402\). It marks the furthest point reached in the fourteenth century metamorphosis of castle into palace. Although the most important side, containing the main buildings, was destroyed in the sixteenth century, enough remains to show how much the castle was now influenced by the traditions of the civil, town palace on the one hand and of the monastic cloister on the other. The main defences were manpower and a wide, deep moat, and the entrance was guarded by a fortified bridge and double drawbridge. The silhouette is long and low, and the squat corner towers do little to dispel the general effect of horizontality. The latter is accentuated by the regular succession of the windows in the plain brick walls and by the unbroken line of castellations and machicolations below the roof. The two storeys of wide, twin-lighted, pointed windows give promise of large, well-lit rooms within and are a symbol of good living and of the world of civil rather than of military architecture. Internally it is only the brooding corner towers and the Ghibelline castellations that show concern with matters of defence. The surviving parts are characterized by regularity on the grandest scale. Each structural and decorative detail lies within the main tradition of Lombard civil and ecclesiastical architecture. The entire building is a symbol of a power now so entrenched that military considerations, although by no means totally ignored, no longer seriously interfere with gracious living. Symmetry and appearance, spaciousness and splendour, have become more important than defensive ingenuity or even practicality. The photo shows at left the south façade with the entrance. ## Related artworks - [Aerial view]() - [Aerial view]() - [Apse of a basilica]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Basilica di Sant'Antonio: Chiostro del Noviziato]() - [Basilica Santi Nereo e Achilleo]() - [Ca' Foscari: Façade]() - [Chamber of the millers]() - [Chiesa dell'Incoronata: Interior of the dome]() - [Cloister gallery]() - [Detail of the façade]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()