Apart from Parco Sempione, good for a wander or lakeside picnic,
the area around the Castello Sforzesco has little to detain you,
and there are more interesting pickings to the south, beyond the
busy streets of the financial district, skirted by Corso Magenta.
The Museo Archeologico , in the ex-Monastero Maggiore at
Corso Magenta 15 (Tues-Sun 9.30am-5.30pm; free), is well worth a
visit. The displays of glass phials, kitchen utensils and jewellery
from Roman Milan are compelling, and though there's a scarcity of
larger objects, there is a colossal head of Jove, found near the
castle, a torso of Hercules and a smattering of mosaic pavements
unearthed around the city.
But what really brings visitors into this part of town is the
church of Santa Maria delle Grazie - famous for its mural of
the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. First built as a
Gothic church by the fifteenth-century architect Solari, Santa
Maria delle Grazie was partially rebuilt under a dissatisfied
Lodovico Sforza by the more up-to-date Bramante, who tore down
Solari's chancel and replaced it with a massive dome supported by
an airy Renaissance cube. Lodovico also intended to replace the
nave and facade, but was unable to do so before Milan fell to the
French, leaving an odd combination of styles - Solari's Gothic
vaults, decorated in powdery blues, reds and ochre, illuminated by
the light that floods through the windows of Bramante's dome. A
side door leads into Bramante's cool and tranquil cloisters,
outside of which there's a good view of the sixteen-sided drum the
architect placed around his dome.
Leonardo's Last Supper - signposted Cenacolo
Vinciano - is one of the world's great paintings and most
resonant images. However, art of this magnitude doesn't come easy:
visits must be booked by telephone preferably 3 or 4 days in
advance (reservations Mon-Fri 9am-7pm tel 02.8942.1146; viewing
Tues-Sat 9am-6.30pm, Sun 9am-7.30pm; L12,000/€6.20, plus
L2000/€1.03 obligatory booking fee). Henry James likened the
painting to an "illustrious invalid" that people visited with
"leave-taking sighs and almost death-bed or tip-toe precautions";
certainly it's hard, when you visit the painting, decayed and faded
on the refectory wall, not to feel that it's the last time you'll
see it. Restoration is virtually perpetual due to its fragile
nature, but the main part of the fresco is free from scaffolding.
That the work survived at all is something of a miracle. Leonardo's
decision to use oil paint rather than the more usual faster-drying
- and longer-lasting - fresco technique with watercolours led to
the painting disintegrating within five years of its completion. A
couple of centuries later Napoleonic troops billetted here used the
wall for target practice. And in 1943 a bomb destroyed the
building, amazingly leaving only the Last Supper 's wall
standing. Well-meaning restoration over the centuries has also
meant that little of Leonardo's original colouring has survived,
but despite this the painting still retains its power. Leonardo
spent two years on it, searching the streets of Milan for models.
When the monks complained that the face of Judas was still
unfinished, Leonardo replied that he had been searching for over a
year among the city's criminals for a sufficiently evil face, and
that if he didn't find one he would use the face of the prior.
Whether or not Judas's face is modelled on the prior's is
unrecorded, but Leonardo's Judas does seem, as Vasari wrote, "the
very embodiment of treachery and inhumanity".
A couple of blocks south, at Via S. Vittore 21, the Museo
Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica (Tues-Fri
9.30am-4.50pm, Sat & Sun 9.30am-6.20pm; L12,000/€6.20) is
dedicated to Leonardo and is inspired by his inventions, with
reconstructions of some of his wackier contraptions, including the
famous flying machine. Less compelling are the general sections on
physics, astronomy, telecommunications and musical instruments.
There are also collections of steam trains, aeroplanes and even an
ocean liner.
The nearby church of Sant'Ambrogio (Mon-Sat 7am-noon
& 3-7pm, Sun 7am-1pm & 3.30-8pm) was founded in the fourth
century by Milan's patron saint. St Ambrose, as he's known in
English, is even today an important name in the city: the Milanese
refer to themselves as Ambrosiani, have named a chain of banks
after him, and celebrate his feast day, December 7, with the
opening of the Scala season and a big street market around the
church. Ambrose's remains still lie in the church's crypt, but
there's nothing left of the original church in which his most
famous convert, St Augustine, first heard him preach.
The present church, the blueprint for many of Lombardy's
Romanesque basilicas, is, however, one of the city's loveliest,
reached through a colonnaded quadrangle with column capitals carved
with rearing horses, contorted dragons and an assortment of bizarre
predators. Inside, to the left of the nave, a freestanding
Byzantine pillar is topped with a "magic" bronze serpent, flicked
into a loop and symbolizing Aaron's rod - an ancient tradition held
that on the Day of Judgement it would crawl back to the Valley of
Jesophat. Look, too, at the pulpit, a superb piece of Romanesque
carving decorated with reliefs of wild animals and the occasional
human, most of whom are intent upon devouring one another. There
are older relics further down the nave, notably the ciborium,
reliefed with the figures of saints Gervasius and Protasius -
martyred Roman soldiers whose clothed bodies flank that of St
Ambrose in the crypt. A nineteenth-century autopsy revealed that
they had been killed by having their throats cut. Similar
investigations into St Ambrose's remains restored the reputation of
the anonymous fifth-century artist responsible for the mosaic
portrait of the saint in the Cappella di San Vittorio in Ciel d'Oro
(to the right of the sacristry). Until then it was assumed that
Ambrose owed his crooked face to a slip of the artist's hand, but
the examination of his skull revealed an abnormally deep-set tooth,
suggesting that his face would indeed have been slightly
deformed.
Outside (entrance to the left of the choir) is Bramante's
unfinished Cortile della Canonica . The side that Bramante
did complete, a novel concoction incorporating knobbly "tree trunk"
columns and a triumphal arch, was shattered by a bomb in the last
war and reconstructed from the fragments. The second side was added
only in 1955 and leads to a modest museum (Mon & Wed-Fri
10am-noon & 3-5pm, Sat & Sun 3-5pm; L3000/€1.55), whose
only memorable exhibit is St Ambrose's bed.