Vigevano
Located an hour's bus ride west of Pavia, VIGEVAN0 is one of the wealthier Lombard towns, teeming with boutiques, antique dealers, and above all shoe stores. The footwear industry is the main cause of the city's prosperity. On Sundays at Corso Cavour you can visit the only shoe museum in Italy, which has in its collection the most bizarre and eccentric designs of shoes from all over the country.
The city itself is not very interesting and there's not much to see outside of Piazza Ducale. Designed by Bramante (greatly influenced by Leonard) plac, surrounded on three sides by well-preserved, pokrytymi wytwornymi freskami podcieniami, it is the embodiment of Renaissance harmony and even the baroque facade of the cathedral, skillfully rounded, to hide the fact, that the church stands at an angle to the square, it does not infringe the proportion of the whole.
Castello is also worth visiting in Vigevano (Tue-Sun. 9.30-12.30 i 14.30-17.30). That Visconti fortress, and later the Sforza, has been under renovation for over ten years, but it is this state of half-decomposition that makes it so attractive. Because the lock is basically not guarded, especially in the morning, you can enter, wherever you want, up the creaking stairs to the upper floors, or the damp-soaked corridors down, to the dungeons. The oldest part of the complex is built by the Visconti to defend the road to Milan, connected to the lock by a covered passage, fort Rocca Yecchia. The Sforza kept the military character of the castle, but they added an elegant one to it, and today the neglected Palazzo Ducale, an open corridor for evening walks of the ladies of the court, Loggia delle Dame, and a second open gallery, Falconieri. The latter was initially intended for the training of falcons, but now it houses the castle's most ridiculous exhibition, collection of ceramic tiles from a military bathroom, which was erected at the beginning of this century as part of the reconstruction of the castle into barracks. On the right side of the courtyard there are stables designed by Leonardo. There is an attic under the very high roof of the stable, formerly intended for hay and for soldiers (it gives a certain picture of the life and work of the Sforza army).