Santa Maria delle Grazie

Curious: the name of this site implies that the main sight is the church, which just so happens to include Da Vinci's version of the Last Supper. This might be historically true, as Leonardo was commissioned to do a painting in the Dominicans' refectory: an important piece, but still for private contemplation by the monks only, and in a sense, however important, a decorative element of a bigger church. But then, the Artist set in and decided that this would not have been your ordinary painting. And so, if there once was a painting as part of a convent complex, now we rather have a convent complex and church functioning as the frame for one of the most famous paintings in the world.

Visit technicalities and suggestions

The visit is very simple and straightforward, almost minimalistic, once you have a ticket. The gist of it has been expounded by other reviewers and seems to be well known: there is only one official site and seller from where you can buy the ticket (standard price currently, summer 2021, at 15€... 1€ per minute of visit!) after having registered, and, normally, as access is extremely limited, you have to plan that with ample advance (months), even if there always is a small chance for last-minute tickets (try calling them directly; calling for information is always a good idea anyway). Normally; but in the last year, due to the pandemic, since the museum finally reopened, the number of visitors has …

We visited the Santa Maria delle Grazie church with Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper" mid February 2019 and can add / confirm the following to the below reviews:

Unless you are very lucky you won’t get in without a reservation and the reservation process is still ‘hit and miss’. Unless you are on a (expensive) tour which includes a visit to the Last Supper, tickets have to be booked through the Vivaticket website (https://www.vivaticket.it/eng/event/cenacolo-vinciano/26482).

The website mentions on which date tickets for the following months are released, e.g. in our case the tickets for February and March 2019 were released on December 11, 2018. Be ready to order as soon as possible on these release dates (and register in advance) since in a couple of minutes all tickets for popular days (i.e. Saturday and Sunday) will be sold out. In our case, only a timeslot including a guided tour in Italian was still available. This adds another EUR 3.5 to the EUR 12 ticket price and has to be booked separately.

When visiting the church, you first have to swap your online confirmation for a paper ticket in the ticket office. Since we booked a guided tour, we expected a guide but strangely enough this was not the case. However, we (and everyone with the same timeslot) did receive an audioguide which – since we don’t speak Italian – was a better option than a guided tour in Italian.      

It is now permitted to take pictures …

The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a curious specimen on the World Heritage list. It is not altogether unremarkable, but also not in any sense surpassing to warrant special recognition. And although its name is fully spelled out in the WH property title, the inscription is entirely devoted to the famous painting that adorns one of the walls of the adjoining convent’s refectory. I first stopped by the church more than five years ago but that visit did not include viewing of Leonardo’s The Last Supper. That was too significant an omission to be able to count the site as visited. In November of 2018 I made an extra effort to see the painting.

It is not a trivial exercise. Access to the painting is allowed at 15-minute intervals for groups of 30 people. Demand is always significant, so it is practically impossible to just show up and get in. Prior reservations are essential. I made ours full 3 month in advance.

The access procedure is a bit grotesquely over-secure. Large bags need to be placed in lockers at the ticket office and you have to go through a metal detector at the visitor entrance, which nowadays is par for the course at many important museums. But then you and your group of visitors are ushered through a series of automatic glass doors, which only open once the previous ones have closed behind you and the way forward is deemed clear by an invisible dispatcher. The …

Once you have figured out how the booking system works (you have to order tickets around 3 months in advance), and if you are a bit flexible about the date and time of your visit, it works quite smoothly and you can leisurely walk to the counter in the building next to the church (past the rows of tourists who have not made a booking and are told by the staff that they are full for the next weeks) to pick up your tickets (an alternative option seems to be available - book a guided tour of Milan with one of several agencies, and many of these include the church; this can apparently be done on shorter notice). At the appointed time, you walk into the church and then are left alone for about 15 minutes (audioguides are available) to admire one of the great masterpieces of the Renaissance, done by one of humanity's great geniuses - Leonardo's "The Last Supper". I found the visit very pleasant and enlightening, and well worth the effort to book a ticket. The complex of Santa Maria delle Grazie is in the centre of Milan, only a relatively short walk from the Duomo (which would be a WH site in any other country).

Unfortunately nearly everything about our visit to Cenacolo Vinciano to view “The Last Supper” turned out to be unsatisfactory - from the booking procedure to the actual visit itself. I know that Milan Museums face tremendous pressure from numbers of people wanting to see it, but things can be “done” better - a few days earlier we had a far superior experience when visiting the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova.

Planning several months in advance, I registered with Vivaticket - the agent which seems to have the prime “rights” to sell tickets. (They have also “cornered” the market for the Scrovegni, but we didn’t use them and, on arrival, obtained a late evening ticket for 4 hours later). This was a bit bureaucratic with the need to create an account with password and to activate it from an e-mailed link (Congratulations - you can now book for rock concerts and soccer matches across Italy!). Confusingly they only open bookings every few months for a variable number of months in advance! So in 2016, on Sep 7 they open sales for Nov/Dec but on 8 Oct they only open up Jan sales! I had registered in July and in early August, duly went to the site on the appointed opening day to book my late Sept ticket - but already everything was said to be sold!! Now there are of course other agents selling tickets as part of expensive wider guided tours of Milan and I wonder if they get “First pick”. …

I visited this WHS in June 2007. You have to book well in advance to see The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. I was bewildered to learn that this famous masterpiece was for some time a mere stable decoration!!! Unbelievable!

This is one of these WHS where you really have to make an effort to get in. I already set out 3 months beforehand to book tickets online, and still, only a time slot at 8.45 am on Sunday morning was available. The entrance fee is only 6.5 EUR for adults, and free for children and over-65's. I also got a simple audio guide for 3.50.

The painting (it's not a fresco) is located in the refectory, accessible at the back of the church via a separate entrance. Every 15 minutes groups of 25 people are let in. You go through a series of electronic doors, opened up one by one to heighten the anticipation. It made me think of the same spectacle at the Altamira Cave. However, that is only a replica, while this is the real thing.

My mother and I were the first to enter the huge dining hall. It has the Last Supper covering the complete wall on your right hand, and a Crucifixion fresco by Giovanni Donato da Montorfano doing the same on the left.

There are benches to sit on from where you can quietly take it all in. The painting is unbelievably bright, it has been restored many times as the paint will not hold very long on the drywall. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to "brush away" the large door opening in the center that hides Jesus' feet.

After our scheduled 15 minutes gazing at the paintings was …

The church is beautiful and the town of Milan too. Most of the guidebooks says Milan is nothing special, but i enjoyed the 2 days there much (one more day would be better). There are many places which are worth to see.

As mentioned below - it is quite difficult to see The Last supper, because of the plenty of tourists who want to see it. For the last moment travellers i can mention www.zaniviaggi.it who has tickets - of course for a higher price as part of a guided tour. This is the way how i got in and i can recommend the tour.

The church is very nice, i enjoyed the stay inside as there was a mass and it was quite magical. The painting itself is not in church but in refectory and in the same room is another master piece - Crucifixation.

I hope i will have a chance to get to Milan once again

I have been many times in Milan and visited the stunning Gothic and Renaissance complex of Santa Maria delle Grazie built from 1463 to 1490 by Guiniforte Solari, reworked by Donato Bramante from 1492 and restored by Luca Beltrami in 1895, after its transformation in barracks and the begin of the demolition. The façade of the church has a nice portal and the apse, projected by Bramante, has a cubic block of base with lateral apses and the apse of the presbytery in form of a parallelepiped; the dome has sixteen sides, with a gallery of double columns that supports the roof that is supported inside the church by four arches and pendetives. In the interior, projected by Solari, there are three Gothic naves with two rows of columns, ogival vaulting and a double row of lateral chapels. The vaults have nice frescos, discovered after being hid in the 16th century, the pillars of the lateral naves are decorated with frescos of saints painted by Bernardino Butinone and some frescos in the lateral chapels are by Gaudenzio Ferrari. There is also a nice tomb sculpted by Francesco Cazzaniga and a painting by Paris Bordone. The chapel of Madonna delle Grazie, reconstructed after the Second World War, contains a painting revered during a pestilence that gives name to the complex. The presbytery has a cap vault and some oculus and contains two rows of wooden choir inlayed stalls. The convent, seat from 1552 to 1778 of the Inquisition of Milan, has …

The Last Supper (Canacolo) is such a famous image and I have seen versions of it at many other UNESCO sites made from many materials (salt and iron stand out in my memory) so there is no doubt about the validity of its inclusion on the list. The fresco sits in the refecroy of the convent and is in a reasonably poor state of repair due to restoration attempts, the odd technique that da Vinci employed to apply it and the idea of the Dominicans to enlarge the doorway thus cutting off Christ’s legs. The already famous image has also seen an upsurge in interest due to the international bestseller ‘The da Vinci Code’. It is a very impressive piece of work overall and well worth the hassle of getting tickets and going through several de-humidifying chambers.

The church itself is simple with some nice frescos, however the apse (pictured) and cloister designed by Bramante are very impressive and twined with the Cenacolo reflect a large change in artistic style.

I am surprised that I am the first person to write a review of this site as it is so famous. The church is in Milan and very easy to reach, the real problems start with being able to get a ticket to see it. You will have to RESERVE well in advance. The link that Els has given above is the official ticket office, and is the best place to get tickets from as they are the cheapest, however …