40 Fun Facts About Duchy of Milan

Which carmaker's badge still shows the biscione, the serpent emblem of Milan's Visconti dukes?

Alfa Romeo was founded in Milan in 1910 and built its badge from the city's flag and the serpent of its medieval ruling family. The snake is drawn with a child in its mouth.

Which Tuscan artist spent seventeen years at the Milan court of Ludovico Sforza?

Leonardo da Vinci worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He had pitched himself to Ludovico in a letter as a builder of machines for defending and besieging cities.

The oldest surviving cards for which game were painted for Milan's Visconti and Sforza dukes?

Tarot began as an everyday card game called trionfi, meaning triumphs. About fifteen decks painted for the two ducal families survive, none of them complete.

Which French general captured Milan in 1796, bringing four centuries of the duchy to an end?

Napoleon Bonaparte took Milan during the War of the First Coalition, and the duchy was abolished a year later. Even after his final defeat, the great powers chose not to revive it.

Which mural did Ludovico Sforza commission for the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan?

The Last Supper began to deteriorate soon after it was finished in 1498 because of the experimental method used, and it was already flaking by 1517.

Which lord of Milan paid 100,000 florins in 1395 to become the city's first duke?

Gian Galeazzo Visconti had seized power only ten years earlier, and as duke he went on to conquer Pisa, Siena, Perugia and Bologna.

Which French king was taken prisoner at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 while fighting to hold Milan?

Francis I was held in a tower in Madrid until he signed a treaty giving up his claim to the duchy in exchange for his freedom.

Which Milan opera house opened in 1778, two years after fire destroyed the old ducal court theatre?

La Scala takes its name from the church of Santa Maria della Scala, which once stood on the site. Antonio Salieri wrote the opera performed on its opening night.

Which fabric industry took off under the Sforza and helped make Milan one of the richest Renaissance states?

Silk depends on mulberry leaves to feed the worms, and Ludovico Sforza was himself an expert grower of mulberries.

Which Milan landmark, begun in 1386 under a Visconti lord, took nearly six centuries to complete?

The Duomo is a brick building faced with marble from quarries that its first ducal patron gave to the builders in perpetuity. Its last details were finished only in 1965.

Which King of the Romans sold the title Duke of Milan in 1395 and was deposed by German princes in 1400?

Wenceslaus, nicknamed the Idle, angered the German princes by selling the title, and they held it against him when they voted to remove him.

The republic Milan's citizens declared in 1447 was named after which saint, the city's 4th-century bishop?

Ambrose was adopted as patron by the Golden Ambrosian Republic, which lasted under three years before hunger forced the city to accept a new duke.

Which mercenary captain starved Milan into surrender in 1450 and founded its second ducal dynasty?

Francesco Sforza had married the last Visconti duke's daughter, and he won the hungry city over by handing out food once it gave in.

The 1454 peace that kept Italy's states in balance for forty years was signed in which town near Milan?

Lodi gave its name to the treaty that confirmed the new Sforza duke and fixed Milan's eastern frontier on the Adda river.

The fifth Duke of Milan was stabbed to death by three conspirators in a church in 1476 on which feast day?

St Stephen's Day, 26 December, was chosen because the duke was due at the church of Santo Stefano; one assassin knelt before him as if to speak, then struck.

Ludovico Sforza, the duke who lost Milan to France in 1499, is usually known by which childhood nickname?

Il Moro, meaning the Moor, is usually put down to the boy's dark hair, eyes and complexion; one chronicler says his parents coined it in jest.

Bronze collected for a giant horse statue in Ludovico Sforza's Milan was used in 1494 to make what?

Cannons were forged from the metal after Ludovico sent it to his father-in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, who feared a French invasion. The monument was never completed.

Which Ferrara noblewoman married Ludovico Sforza and set the fashions of Milan's court until dying at 21?

Beatrice d'Este was a patron of the arts as well as a leader of fashion, and she rallied Milan's resistance when a French army threatened the city.

Which daughter of a Duke of Milan ruled Forlì and Imola and was nicknamed the Tiger for her defiance?

Caterina Sforza was an illegitimate child of Milan's fifth duke; she held out against the Borgia army until she was captured, and Machiavelli wrote about her.

At which 1515 battle near Milan did a young French king win back the duchy after two days of fighting?

Marignano was fought near the town now called Melegnano, after the French hauled 72 heavy guns over a previously unknown Alpine pass.

Milan's first duke founded a monastery near Pavia, meant as his family's mausoleum, for monks of which religious order?

Carthusians were known for plain, secluded living, yet the Certosa di Pavia is renowned for the exuberance of its architecture.

King Louis XII of France claimed Milan in 1499 through which grandmother, daughter of the first duke?

Valentina Visconti married the future Duke of Orléans under a contract that made her heir to the Visconti lands if her father's male line failed.

Which Holy Roman Emperor claimed Milan as a vacant imperial fief when the last Sforza duke died childless?

Charles V later installed his son Philip as duke, which tied Milan to the Spanish crown for the next century and a half.

Which power gained the Duchy of Milan during the War of the Spanish Succession and held it until 1796?

Austria took Milan in 1707 and went on to reform it, redrawing the land register and ending church censorship.

Which Alessandro Manzoni novel is set in the Duchy of Milan under Spanish rule during the plague of 1630?

The Betrothed follows Renzo and Lucia, a village couple planning to wed in 1628, and it is noted for its description of the epidemic that struck the city.

Which Duke of Milan, the last male of his dynasty, died in 1447 leaving only an illegitimate daughter?

Filippo Maria Visconti had his first wife executed and left no legitimate heir, so the city tried governing itself before his son-in-law took the title.

Milan's future first duke seized sole power in 1385 by ambushing and imprisoning which relative?

His uncle Bernabò had shared the lordship of Milan with him; after the ambush the older man died in prison within months, reportedly poisoned.

Which seafaring republic did Milan's Sforza dukes hold for long stretches of the late fifteenth century?

Genoa lay between landlocked Milan and the Mediterranean, and the dukes held it twice between the 1460s and 1499.

Milan's craftsmen rivalled southern Germany's as Europe's leading makers of which Renaissance product?

Plate armour from Milan was worn on battlefields across Europe, and the city's Negroli family produced the most famous modeller of its relief decoration.

Which architect worked in Milan under Ludovico Sforza before planning the new St Peter's Basilica in Rome?

Donato Bramante was Ludovico's court architect in all but name, and in Milan he built a famous trompe-l'oeil choir at Santa Maria presso San Satiro.

Which rival family did Archbishop Ottone Visconti defeat at Desio in 1277 to win control of Milan?

Della Torre lords had held Milan's top offices for decades; their leader Napo was captured in the battle and died in prison the following year.

Which rival republic pushed its border with the Duchy of Milan to the Adda river in 1454?

Venice extended its rule as far as the Adda after four years of war, a settlement hurried along by the shock of Constantinople's fall to the Ottomans.

The Duchy of Milan at its height covered almost all of which modern Italian region?

Lombardy formed the core, but around 1400 the dukes also held parts of four other regions and towns as far south as Umbria.

Which series of conflicts began in 1494 after Ludovico Sforza encouraged a French invasion of Naples?

The Italian Wars dragged on until 1559, and Ludovico's gamble rebounded on him: within five years a French army had taken his own duchy.

Soldiers from which neighbouring people drove the French from Milan in 1512 and installed a Sforza duke?

The Swiss in effect ran the duchy for three years, and even after losing it they kept the valleys that now form the canton of Ticino.

Which Milan-born thinker condemned torture and the death penalty in On Crimes and Punishments?

Cesare Beccaria wrote it in his mid-twenties, when he belonged to a Milan literary society that called itself the Academy of Fists.

Cecilia Gallerani, mistress of Milan's Ludovico Sforza, is the sitter in which Renaissance portrait?

Lady with an Ermine may point to her lover: Ludovico used the animal as a personal emblem after being made a member of the Order of the Ermine in 1488.

The name Sforza, borne by Milan's Renaissance dukes, began as a mercenary's nickname meaning what?

Strong was the sense of the nickname that the commander Alberico da Barbiano gave his soldier Muzio Attendolo, whose son went on to become Duke of Milan.

Milan's ducal flag quartered the Visconti serpent with which emblem of the Holy Roman Empire?

An eagle was the imperial badge, and the first duke was licensed to add it to his family arms when he received his title.

Which French client state, with Milan as its capital, took over the former duchy's lands in 1797?

Cisalpine Republic was the name given to a merger of two short-lived states that the French had set up north and south of the Po a year earlier.