Last Supper Guided Tour with Sforza Castle Courtyards Milan

Santa Maria delle Grazie

The meeting point is the small square in front of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a Dominican church and convent begun in 1463. Your guide points out the two building phases: the Gothic nave in red brick and the later Renaissance tribune with its round drum and terracotta decoration, added in the 1490s when the Sforza duke chose the church as his family's burial place. The convent's refectory, the monks' dining hall, is where the Last Supper was painted.

In August 1943 a bomb destroyed much of the refectory and the cloister; the mural survived because it had been protected with sandbags and scaffolding. Since 1980 the church and the painting are listed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The church itself is usually free to enter outside services, so if you want more time you can step inside after the tour; the Last Supper museum entrance is on the left side of the square.

The Last Supper mural

The Last Supper was painted between about 1494 and 1498 directly on the refectory wall, in an experimental technique on dry plaster rather than true fresco, which let the artist work slowly but made the paint fragile. It shows the instant after Christ announces that one of the twelve will betray him: the apostles recoil, question and protest in four groups of three, while all lines of the painted room lead to Christ's head at the centre.

With an art historian beside you, the 15 minutes in the room become far richer: you learn how to read the gestures, why the colours were lost and recovered in the restoration completed in 1999, and what the Crucifixion painted on the opposite wall tells about the same years. Last Supper tickets are released in limited numbers and sell out quickly, which is why a guided tour with tickets included is the most reliable way to see it.

Sforza Castle (Castello Sforzesco)

Sforza Castle was begun in 1450 by Francesco Sforza, the new duke of Milan, on the ruins of an older 14th-century fortress. Under his son it became one of the most splendid courts of Renaissance Europe, then served Spanish and Austrian garrisons as a military citadel. At the end of the 19th century it was saved from demolition and restored, and the tall central gate tower was rebuilt and inaugurated in 1905.

On this Sforza Castle tour you enter through that tower into the vast parade ground, then continue to the Rocchetta, the last refuge of the dukes, and the elegant Ducal Courtyard with its arcades. The guide explains how the walls, moats and round corner towers worked. The courtyards are open every day from early morning to evening without a ticket; the castle museums are closed on Mondays and are not included in this tour.

Sempione Park and the walk through the centre

The 15-minute walk between Santa Maria delle Grazie and the castle is part of the guided tour. It crosses one of Milan's most elegant districts, with handsome palaces, quiet courtyards and the Roman roots of the city still visible in the street plan; your guide uses it to tell how Milan grew from a Roman town into the capital of a rich duchy.

The tour ends at the castle, right at the edge of Sempione Park, the city's largest central park, laid out in the 1890s on the old ducal hunting grounds. A straight path leads across the lawns to the Arch of Peace, a neoclassical triumphal arch completed in 1838. Is Sforza Castle worth visiting after the tour? Yes: the museums, the park and the arch can easily fill the rest of your morning, and Cairoli and Cadorna metro stations are a few minutes away.