Torre Branca

Torre Branca tickets and the five-person lift

The lift gets to the top of the Torre Branca in about a minute. Then you get about five minutes in the glazed lookout, so on a busy day the queue for the lift can take longer than the visit itself.

The entry ticket we sell costs €9 for anyone aged 7 and over, €6 for children aged 4 to 6, and nothing for under-4s. It comes on your phone, and since there’s no refund or change of date and the tower shuts in wind or bad weather, it’s worth buying once you’ve seen the forecast.

With so short a stay at the top, the tower fits into an afternoon in the park rather than filling one. The Sforza Castle, about five minutes’ walk away at the other end of Parco Sempione, is on both YesMilano passes; the tower isn’t on any of Milan’s city passes.

Torre Branca opening hours: last winter’s as a guide

The tower keeps short hours, with mornings on only a few days, and on Saturdays it opens again in the evening, from 20:30 to midnight. Its operator, FPS Eventi, publishes the hours one month at a time, and the November table wasn’t out when we checked at the end of October. Last winter’s hours are the best guide:

October 2026 was more generous than that, with Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 15:00 to 19:00 and a 19:00 close on weekdays, so this winter’s table may differ. In summer, from late May to the end of September, it also opens from 20:30 to midnight on every day it’s open.

Besides the weather, it closes for maintenance, as it did from 20 to 27 July 2026, and for private events.

What you see from the top of the Torre Branca

The lookout is covered and glazed all round, close to 100 metres up. The Sforza Castle sits at the far end of the park below you, and across the rooftops you can pick out the Duomo.

The skyscrapers of Porta Nuova and CityLife are in view as well, and on a clear day the Alps rise behind the city. The glass can put reflections in your photos.

Gio Ponti’s tower for the 1933 Triennale

The Comune di Milano commissioned the tower in 1932 for the fifth Triennale, the 1933 edition of the exhibition now held at Triennale Milano. The architect Gio Ponti designed it with the engineers Cesare Chiodi and Ettore Ferrari, the metalworks firm Angelo Bombelli put it up in 68 working days, and it opened on 10 August 1933 as the Torre Littoria, later renamed the Torre del Parco.

It’s built of bolted steel tubes from Dalmine, in the shape of a tall hexagonal pyramid with its top cut off, and the lift runs up a shaft in the middle. At 108.6 metres it comes level with the Madonnina, the statue on top of the Duomo, and the story goes that a decree kept the tower from rising above her.

At the top there was a restaurant and a beacon. In 1939 the light gave way to an aerial for EIAR, the radio company that later became RAI, and in 1972 the top was closed to visitors.

Thirty years later the Fratelli Branca distillery, which owns the tower, restored it and reopened it to the public in 2002, and the tower has carried the Branca name since. The restaurant at the top never came back, but there’s one at the foot of the tower.

Getting to the Torre Branca in Parco Sempione

The 500 metres from Cadorna are the operator’s figure, and it also puts the tower 200 metres from the Arco della Pace. The Milan website MilanoFree reckons 15 minutes on foot from Cadorna, so give yourself a little longer.