Museo dei Mobili e delle Sculture Lignee

Inside Milan's Castello Sforzesco sits the Museo dei Mobili e delle Sculture Lignee. It opened in 1900, after the castle's restoration, and shows furniture and wooden sculpture as part of the Museo delle Arti Decorative. A chronological route carries you from the fourteenth century to the present day. The history of Lombard furniture supplies the thread.

The Renaissance rooms hold the Calice di Ludovico il Moro, a Murano glass chalice bearing Sforza heraldry. Nearby stands the Cassone dei tre duchi, a painted chest showing the Sforza dukes. The Coretto di Torchiara, meanwhile, brings a private chapel seat from the Castello di Torrechiara. From there you pass into Baroque and Mannerist territory. The Arazzi delle Arti Liberali, tapestries from Bruges, hang near the Automa diabolico, a mechanical curiosity from Manfredo Settala's Wunderkammer. The Stipo Genovese copies Genoa's Palazzo Tursi in miniature, and the Stipo Passalacqua, a Milanese masterpiece, carries moralistic architectural decoration. The final stretch brings the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Giuseppe Maggiolini's neoclassical cabinetwork, coveted by European courts, leads into Carlo Bugatti's eclectic designs and Mario Sironi's Art Deco.

One object may stay with you longest: the Cassettina damaschinata, a finely worked casket that once held the will of Duke Ludovico. Even a duke's final wishes deserved their own decorated box.