One of seven children, Visconti was born in Milan into a noble and wealthy family, one of the region's richest.

* The title of viscount is less common in Italy (" visconte "), though the noble Visconti family, once rulers of Milan, offers an outstanding example.

Vigevano is crowned by the Castello Sforzesco, a stronghold rebuilt 1492 – 94 for Ludovico Maria Sforza ( Ludovico il Moro ), the great patron born in the town, who transformed the fortification / hunting lodge of Luchino Visconti ( who in turn had re-used a Lombard fortress ) into a rich noble residence, at the cusp of Gothic and Renaissance.

Start of the construction coincided with the accession to power in Milan of the archbishop's cousin Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and was meant as a reward to the noble and working classes, who had suffered under his tyrannical Visconti predecessor Barnabò.

Visconti is the family name of two important Italian noble dynasties of the Middle Ages.

From 1260 to 1347 the city was dominated by a series of different Italian noble families and adventurers like Facino Cane, who in the unsettled affairs of Lombardy had assembled a string of lordships and great wealth which he bequeathed to his wife, Beatrice, and arranged with his friends that a marriage should be effected between her and Filippo Maria Visconti.

The family was a noble one, exiled with the rest of the Guelphs by the Visconti.

Other correspondents include her various confessors, among them Raymond of Capua, the kings of France and Hungary, the infamous mercenary John Hawkwood, the Queen of Naples, members of the Visconti family of Milan, and numerous religious figures.

They acquired the dukedom and Duchy of Milan from the previously ruling Visconti family in the mid-15th century, and lost it to the Spanish Habsburgs about a century later.

His son Francesco I Sforza ruled Milan for the first half of the Renaissance era, acquiring the title of Duke of Milan from the extinct Visconti family in 1447.

Insert shows the Duchy of Milan ruled by the house of Visconti | Visconti family and inherited by the Sforzas.

Three mid-15th century sets were made for members of the Visconti family.

Ottone Visconti unsuccessfully led a group of exiles against the city in 1263, but after years of escalating violence on all sides, finally, after the victory in the Battle of Desio ( 1277 ), he won the city for his family.

However, the Visconti family were able to seize power ( signoria ) in Milan, based on their " Ghibelline " friendship with the German Emperors.

The Ghibelline Visconti family was to retain power in Milan for a century and a half from the early 14th century until the middle of the 15th century.

Pavia held out against the domination of Milan, finally yielding to the Visconti family, rulers of that city in 1359 ; under the Visconti Pavia became an intellectual and artistic centre, being the seat from 1361 of the University of Pavia founded around the nucleus of the old school of law, which attracted students from many countries.

From then till 1405, nine members of the moderately enlightened Carraresi family succeeded one another as lords of the city, with the exception of a brief period of Scaligeri overlordship between 1328 and 1337 and two years ( 1388 – 1390 ) when Giangaleazzo Visconti held the town.

Gallura became by marriage — it had been inherited by a woman, Elena — a possession of the House of Visconti, another Pisan family, in 1207.

** a member of the industrialist Essenbeck family is a member of the SA in the 1969 Luchino Visconti film The Damned, in which one sequence luridly depicts the Night of the Long Knives.

Starting from the 14th century Lodi was ruled by the Visconti family, who built a castle here.

Due to the vulnerable situation, the rule of the republic went to the hands of the Visconti family of Milan.

La Papessa in the Visconti-Sforza Tarot has been identified as a depiction of Sister Manfreda, an Umiliata nun and a relative of the Visconti family who was elected Pope by the heretical Guglielmite sect of Lombard.

The Castle of Piombino remained a Pisane possession until Gerardo Appiani, ceding Pisa to the Milanese Visconti, carved out the independent state of Piombino, Elba, Pianosa and Montecristo for his family, who held it until 1634.

When the succession to the margraviate of Saluzzo was disputed between Manfred V and his nephew Thomas II in 1336, Robert intervened on behalf of Manfred, for Thomas had married into the Ghibelline Visconti family.

Republican Siena had a large influence on the development of the style, but kept to its own dignified Gothic style throughout the period, and afterwards, while the flamboyant Visconti court at Milan, also closely related to the French royal family, was the most important Italian centre of the courtly style.

After some foreign invasions ( notably that of Emperor Henry VII in 1311 ), the Cavalcabò lasted until November 29, 1322, when a more powerful family, the Visconti of Galeazzo I, came to prominence that in Cremona was to last for a century and a half.

Fratricide seems to have become a family custom, for Antonio ( 1375 – 87 ), Cansignorio's natural brother, slew his brother Bartolomeo, thereby arousing the indignation of the people, who deserted him when Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan made war on him.

Later Milan became the capital of the Duchy of Milan, being ruled by the Visconti, the Sforza, the Spanish and the Austrians.

Also in 1395, Gian Galeazzo Visconti became duke of Milan.

In the second half of the fifteenth century, when the Sforza ruled the city, the old Visconti fortress was enlarged and embellished to became the Castello Sforzesco: the seat of an elegant Renaissance court surrounded by a walled hunting park stocked with game captured around the Seprio and Lake Como.

With the exception of several brief periods under Visconti, Montferrat and Sforza rule, Asti remained under Valois control ; it eventually became a direct subject of the French Crown.

After the assassination in 1398 of Biordo Michelotti, who had made himself lord of Perugia, the city became a pawn in the Italian Wars, passing to Gian Galeazzo Visconti ( 1400 ), to Pope Boniface IX ( 1403 ), and to Ladislaus of Naples ( 1408 – 14 ) before it settled into a period of sound governance under the Signoria of the condottiero Braccio da Montone ( 1416 – 24 ), who reached a concordance with the Papacy.

Three years later the Vicentines entrusted the protection of the city to Padua, so as to safeguard republican liberty ; but this protectorate ( custodia ) quickly became dominion, and for that reason Vicenza in 1311 submitted to the Scaligeri lords of Verona, who fortified it against the Visconti of Milan.

After having resisted several attacks by the Comaschi, in 1335 Sondrio and Valtellina became part of the Visconti Milanese dominions.

* Tebaldo Visconti ( c. 1210 – 1276 ), became Pope Gregory X.

The first recipient was Alexandra du Bois ( at the time a student at Indiana University, later a Juilliard School graduate ), followed by Felipe Perez Santiago ( born in Mexico in 1973 ), and Dan Visconti ( born in Illinois in 1982 ); in 2007, Israeli composer Aviya Kopelman became the fourth.

In the 1390s Hawkwood became a commander-in-chief of the army of Florence in the war against the expansion of Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan.

There are two distinct Visconti families: The first one ( chronologically ) in the Republic of Pisa in the mid twelfth century who achieved prominence first in Pisa, then in Sardinia where they became rulers of Gallura.

Towards the end of the 13th Century, Bellagio, which had participated in numerous wars on the side of the Ghibellines ( pro-empire party ), definitely became part of the property of the House of Visconti and was integrated into the Duchy of Milan.

Due to the distance of Venice, this strategy did not guarantee the independence of the area and, after a short protectorate under the rule of Venice ( from 1336 to 1349 ), Salò became a stronghold of the Milanese Visconti family.

Montferrat and the Visconti fought over the town ; later it became a possession of the Gonzaga.

The children were entrusted to their paternal grandmother, Bianca Maria Visconti ; subsequently, all were eventually adopted by Bona of Savoy, who became Galeazzo Maria's second wife on 9 May 1468.

Forlì was seized in 1488 by Visconti and in 1499 by Cesare Borgia, after whose death it became more directly subject to the pope than ever before ( apart from a short-lived return of the Ordelaffi in 1503 – 1504 ).

At nineteen he became orphaned, and subsequently served as a condottiero under Philip IV of France in Flanders, then with the Visconti in Lombardy, and in 1313 under the Ghibelline chief, Uguccione della Faggiuola, lord of Pisa, in central Italy.