Entrance ticket that includes admission to the temporary exhibitions and the castle's inner courtyard.
Approximately 600 metres southeast of the town of Bellinzona, at the highest point of the rocky hill on which the fortifications are located, stands Sasso Corbaro Castle, also known as Unterwalden Castle since 1506 and Santa Barbara Castle since 1818. The structure has a simple layout: a square plan enclosing a small courtyard, the buildings, two corner towers – the keep and the watchtower – and the crenellated walkway.
Of the three castles in Bellinzona, this is the only one for which the precise date of the start of construction work is known. Although there is documented evidence of a tower for controlling and observing the surrounding area dating back to the late 14th century, it was not until the early months of 1479 that construction began on the castle that can still be seen today. Intended to counter the increasingly frequent incursions into the Bellinzona countryside by Confederate armies, the construction of the castle was carried out with great speed – on the Duke's orders – by the renowned Florentine architect Benedetto Ferrini, who died of the plague in the fall of the same year. The work was ultimately completed by the ducal engineer Gabriele Ghiringhelli.
In addition to its primary defensive function, Sasso Corbaro Castle was also used as a place of detention. In later centuries, after 1798, left to its own devices, it began to fall into disrepair; in the early 1870s, the Canton sold it to a company that planned to convert it into a hotel, and a few years later to three Bellinzona families who transformed it into a summer residence. Today, it hosts temporary exhibitions, including the exquisite 17th-century wooden hall, known as the “Poglia Hall,” which the Canton purchased in 1944 from the heirs of the Poglia family.