Castle sasso corbaro

Sasso Corbaro stands 230 metres above Bellinzona, the highest and youngest of the city's three castles. The Duke of Milan's Sforza architect, Benedetto Ferrini, built it in just over six months in 1479 to complete a defensive line meant to keep the Swiss Confederates from reaching Milan; it is the only one of the three with a precise construction date. Its walls form a plain geometric square around a keep and a lookout tower, the stonework functional and unadorned. From the ramparts the view splits in two: north toward the Riviera valley and Pizzo di Claro, south to the Lake Maggiore basin in Italy. The name comes from dialect, "corbatt", raven, for the dark rock the castle sits on. A path climbs here from Montebello, the second of the three castles, roughly thirty-five minutes on foot. Few visitors make it this far up.