A castle, not the Sistine Chapel, and a Mexican restaurant

Today was a big one. I wore poor Libby out. We visited three sites: Sforza Castle, San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore , and Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. 

The Sforza castle started life out in as a fortress built upon the medieval wall around the city of Milan between 1360 and 1370 by Galeazzo II Visconti, and in 1392 Gian Galeazzo had a citadel built to house his troops. After a rather interesting history, in the early 20th century it was restored to it's Sforzian glory, and became a home to a cultural institutions and museums. 

We arrived a little after nine thinking we wouldn't be there very long based on Rick Steves' depiction. We ended up being there at least three hours. :-) I got an audio guide, we dropped one of our bags off and started out. There are some Roman and early Medieval Lombard stone monuments and sculptures, and some fairly large tapestries. 

We moved on up to the upper floors of the castle and came across the area where there are many typical and some quite unusual musical instruments. They had some Hurdy Gurdies, Piochettes (tiny bad sounding violins), beautifully painted Virginals, and a number of other interesting instruments.  

There were a number of paintings, a famous Michelangelo sculpture called the Rondanini Pieta, and an area with pre-Roman artifacts, and Egyptian pieces. They had two mummies and one was still all wrapped up. They had some items with Hieratic and Demotic scripts on them. Those were the script used after Hierolphys. 

The pieta is interesting because it's unfinished. Michelangelo started this piece in the 1550s and worked on it until he died in 1564. It's a sculpture of Mary mourning over the body of Jesus. You can tell it's unfinished and there is an extra arm.

There were a lot of groups at the castle. There were some school groups in the musical instrument section, and those kids were having a ball. Their teacher was taking them from section to section and a man was playing an instrument in each section as their teacher yelled out instructions. It was really cute. There was also some conference with a bunch of adults in suits, so there was a mixture of small children and middle-aged people wandering around being loud. 

On our way to San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore (the not Sistine Chapel) we came across a store called "Canadian" that seems to sell goods with Canadian Maple Leaves, variations of the word "Canada" on them, shoes you'd find in the Pacific Northwest, and a shirt that says "I love rainy days with a blanket and a cup of tea and a book." We thought of Jeremy and Amanda when we saw it and I wanted take a picture of that shirt. 

San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore was a lot of fun. It was built into a Roman wall and originally attached to a female Benedictine convent. Construction started in 1503 and was consecrated in 1518. The inside is more or less painted floor to ceiling. 

I had problems deciding between Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the Pinacoteca de Brera. I went for the former because...well it was a toss up and I was drawn just a bit more to that one. It has a cartoon of Raphael's School of Athens which is the outline for the famous fresco in the Vatican Museums. It wasn't currently viewable because they are in the process of restoring it. We watched a fairly lengthy video on the process of taking it off the wall and some of what they've done since. It's a very large piece so they closed the room it's in but the doors are a window so you can see all the equipment they are using. It was a pretty interesting video considering it had no audio. 

By the time we were done with the museum Libby was really tired (I was pretty tired too) so we went back to our place for a few hours before grabbing dinner. What would a trip to Europe be without trying to find Mexican food? It was actually pretty good, even if it wasn't Mexican food like we know from home. The waiter was super nice and translated the menu for us, they didn't have an English version. Tommy got Pollo Sarten and I got a quesadilla with chorizo, cheese and black beans.

Tomorrow we are off to Vernazza in the Cinque Terra! Libby is looking forward to very small villages and quiet.