Under the Seigniory of the Visconti family, Pavia became the focus of one of the most elegant courts of the Italian Renaissance. Building of the Visconti Castle started soon after the family had become the lords of the city. The Castle was both an armed stronghold and a lordly residence; this dual nature, military and princely at the same time, is mirrored on the one hand by the powerful quadrangular structure and, on the other hand, by the elegance of architectural components and the airy porticoes and loggias.

The Cathedral (Duomo), founded in 1488 and completed only in 1898, when the façade and the dome wer ecompleted according to the original desing. The central dome has an octagonal plan, and stand at 97 m high, weighing some 20,000 tons. This dome is the third for size in Italy, after St. Peter's Basilica and Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Next to the Duomo were the Civic Tower (existing at least from 1330 and enlarged in 1583 by Pellegrino Tibaldi): its fall on March 17, 1989 was the final motivating force that started the last decade's efforts to save the Leaning Tower of Pisa from a similar fate.

The Romanesque church of San Michele Maggiore (St. Michael), an outstanding example of Lombard-Romanesque architecture in Lombardy. It is located on the site of a pre-existing Lombard church, which the lower part of the campanile belongs to. Destroyed in 1004, the church was rebuilt from around the end of the 11th century (including the crypt, the transept and the choir), and finished in 1155. It is characterized by an extensive use of sandstone and by a very long transept, provided with a façade and an apse of its own. In the church the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was incoronated in 1155.

The church of Santa Maria del Carmine, on of the most known examples of Gothic brickwork architecture in northern Italy. It is the second largest church in the city after the Cathedral, and is on the Latin cross plan, with a perimeter of 80 x 40 meters comprising a nave and two aisles. The characteristic façade has a large rose window and seven cusps.

San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro (Italian for "Saint Peter's in the Golden Sky") is a Roman Catholic basilica (and a former cathedral) of the Augustinians. Its name refers to the mosaics of gold leaf behind glass tesserae that formerly decorated the ceiling of the apse. The plain exterior is of brick, with sandstone quoins and window framing. The paving of the church floor is now lower than the modern street level of Piazza Dante, which lies before its facade.
A church of Saint Peter is recorded in Pavia in 604; it was renovated by Liutprand, King of the Lombards (who is buried here) between 720 and 725. The present Romanesque church was consecrated by Pope Innocent II in 1132.
The church is the resting place for the remains of Saint Augustine of Hippotine, who died in 430 in his home diocese of Hippo Regius, and was buried in the cathedral there, during the time of the Vandals. According to Bede's True Martyrology, the body was removed to Cagliari, Sardinia by the Catholic bishops whom the Arian Vandal Huneric had expelled from north Africa. Bede tells that the remains were subsequently redeemed out of the hands of the Saracens there— by Peter, bishop of Pavia and uncle of the Lombard king Liutprand— and deposited in the church of Saint Peter about the year 720.
In January 1327 Pope John XXII issued the papal bull Veneranda Santorum Patrum, in which he appointed the Augustinians guardians of the tomb of Augustine (the Arca di Sant'Agostino), which was remade in 1362 and elaborately carved with bas-reliefs of scenes from Augustine's life. The actual remains of Augustine, however, were no longer identified. Then, illiterate stonemasons working in the crypt altar removed paving blocks and discovered a marble box. Within it were other boxes; in the third box were fragments of wood, numerous bones and bone fragments, and glass vials. Some of the workers later claimed to have seen the name "Augustine" written in charcoal on the top of the box. A factor complicating the authentication of the remains was that San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro was shared by the two Augustinian religious orders in bitter rivalry. The controversy on the authenticity of the bones resulted in broadsides, pamphlets and books.
The Augustinians were expelled in 1700, taking refuge in Milan with the relics of Augustine, and the disassembled Arca, which were removed to the cathedral there. The erstwhile cathedral in Pavia fell into disrepair; it was a military magazine under the Napoleonic occupation. It was not reconstructed until the 1870s, under the urging of Agostino Gaetano Riboldi, later Cardinal Riboldi, and reconsecrated in 1896 when the relics of Augustine and the shrine were once again reinstalled.
Besides being the burial place of Liutprand and Augustine, San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro contains in its crypt that of Boethius, whose Consolation of Philosophy is often taken as the final literary production of Late Antiquity. Dante mentions the tomb of Boethius in San Pietro in Il Paradiso.
A chapter in Bocaccio's Decameron (tenth day, ninth novella) takes place in the basilica, where the sumptuous bed of Thorello, soundly sleeping, is magically transported to San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, where the sacristan discovers him at Matins the following morning.