family, as permanent heads of the Republic, occupied the palace, and transformed it into a fortress, with towers and moats, for the defence of their tyranny. His grandson Azzo beautified it with ornaments and paintings and fountains. These were all destroyed by Galeazzo II., who rebuilt the palace on a much larger and more magnificent scale, with two great courts surrounded by porticos, wherein took place the great marriage feasts, and other celebrations of the splendid Visconte Princes. There, doubtless, was set the banquet for the young Duke of Clarence and his bride Violante, when Petrarca sat beside the bridegroom, among the chief guests, and the boy Gian Galeazzo brought in the marriage gifts. It was in this palace that Giovanmaria Visconte, passing through the courts on his way to hear Mass in S. Gottardo, was stabbed to death by the waiting conspirators. Francesco Sforza and Lodovico il Moro repaired and embellished the palace, and it was inhabited by Isabella of Aragon after the death of her husband Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Restored by il Pellegrini, it was reduced to its present aspect in 1770. The Archiepiscopal Palace, which faces the Duomo on the south-east, represents the dwelling-place of the ecclesiastical princes of Milan for at least a score of centuries, and probably many more. Standing close beside the Cathedral church, the Archbishop’s residence was called, up to the twelfth century, the _Palazzo Milanese_, being in fact during the earlier Middle Ages, when the archbishops ruled the city, the seat of government, until the Palace of the Commune, or of the elected Consuls, which rose in its precincts and under its protection, gradually usurped its place, as the voice of the public parliament, or Arengo, held in the Piazza, grew more and more powerful. Under the Visconte archbishops, who once again united the ecclesiastic and temporal sovereignty in a single hand, the palace was enlarged and partly incorporated with the palace of the Consuls, now become, as we have seen, the fortress of the Visconti. The Arcivescovato was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by Archbishop Arcimboldi, and remains of that date may be seen in the outer cortile. The great inner court is the work of il Pellegrini in S. Carlo Borromeo’s time, and the existing building belongs partly to that period and partly to the end of the eighteenth century. CHAPTER XI _The Basilica of St. Ambrogio_ “Regina delle chiese lombarde.”