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The secret underground passages sketched in Leonardo da Vinci‘s notebooks have finally been found—hidden beneath Milan’s Sforza Castle.
A team from the Polytechnic University of Milan, working with the Sforza Castle administration and the engineering firm Codevintec Italiana, made the discovery using laser scanning, ground-penetrating radar, GPS, and photogrammetry to build a virtual 3D model from photographs.
Sforza Castle
What Did the Researchers Report?
Construction on Sforza Castle in central Milan began in the mid-1300s. Over the centuries it was expanded, altered, and partly destroyed. Today only about one-sixth of the original castle remains, Live Science reports.
Around 1495 Duke Ludovico Sforza hired Leonardo da Vinci and other artists to decorate the castle’s walls and ceilings. It was then that Leonardo sketched the underground labyrinths, which researchers believe served military purposes.
Drawing of the Castle by Leonardo da Vinci
“Leonardo da Vinci knew a lot about military structures and defenses of his time. His drawing shows the castle’s main body and numerous passages,” said Francesca Biolo, the lead author of the study and an architectural history expert who searched for Leonardo’s tunnels as part of her dissertation project.
Biolo and her team focused on the castle’s underground spaces. They wanted to determine whether previously inaccessible or unknown passages lay beneath the ancient structure.
“The results were more significant and intriguing than we expected,” Biolo said. “We discovered rooms on a second underground level and an additional passage running parallel to the known tunnel.”
She added that many more passages likely lie beneath Sforza Castle, but excavations there aren’t possible.
