Italy from South to North

On the last day of our trip, we began as early as always. Leaving our hotel at around half past seven and having found some breakfast on the way, we arrived near the gates of the Cimitero Monumentale a little after eight. We found the cemetery as monumental as its name promised. Its main building was flanked by two towers on the left and two more on the right, all of them adding colour to the white marble with dark lines and alternating patterns along the arches. We walked down the main path until the ossuary and admired the towering and ornate tombs along the way.

From the cemetery we continued via Chinatown to the Arch of Peace. The sun was properly shining by then, lending the practically vacant square around the arch an air of filmlike romance. We kept catching glimpses of the arch as we walked on through the Parco Sempione, which leads directly to the Sforzesco Castle. The towering building was erected by a noble family of the same name, under whom Milan entered an era of great prosperity during the Renaissance.

As I learned from my casual scrolling on Wikipedia, Milan blossomed on three separate occasions. Under emperor Diocletian, it became the capital of the Western Roman Empire; it also lent its name (which was Mediolanum under the Romans) to Emperor Constantine’s decree on religious toleration. This period ended with the collapse of Rome and Milan’s sacking by multiple nomadic groups including Attila’s Huns.

Milan reached its second zenith during the Renaissance, when, as I already mentioned, the Sforzesco family commissioned a number of remarkable public works and sponsored artists like Leonardo da Vinci. However, the consolidation of France and the Habsburg Empire soon eclipsed Milan’s glory. The two countries would contend over Milan for decades, aiming to incorporate it into their own networks of imperial influence.

Milan’s third glorious age began with the unification of Italy. Its rapid industrialisation was aided (and in turn attracted) a wave of immigrants from southern Italy, and its connectedness to the rest of the continent allowed it to become a node in European commerce. Although Milan is still the richest big city in Italy, this period has ended too. The city witnessed population stagnation and loss in the second half of the twentieth century, which has only recently started to reverse.

Aron and I did not reach the Sforzesco Castle through the park, for when we began to approach its walls, we found our path blocked by two rows of barriers and tape. Soon, a police car rode down the path created by these barriers. It was followed by a vehicle carrying a digital timekeeping board, and closely trailing this car were several runners. In just a few seconds, the space between the two barriers was brimming with panting athletes. They poured down in such numbers that they may as well have been wildebeest migrating across the Serengeti. For a while, we watched them cluelessly, but walking along the barrier we eventually found an opening and ran across when the herd thinned out.

We walked around the courtyard of Sforzesco Castle for a few minutes, but since neither of us was very enthusiastic about seeing more medieval art or – God forbid – medieval armour and weaponry, we did not venture inside. Besides, I thought the walls, bastions, and towers looked very pretty from the outside anyway. Instead, we decided to visit the Da Vinci Museum just across the plaza from La Scala. In a somewhat cramped space, we jostled with other tourists to read about Da Vinci’s mad inventions, including the impracticable perpetuum mobile, the impractical submarine, and the impressive but insane 360° battleship. The exhibitions also included information about some of Da Vinci’s most famous paintings, and despite our bemusement at Da Vinci the engineer and inventor, we walked away with a new appreciation for Da Vinci the artist.

The facts we gathered during this impromptu visit – which had been borne of the necessity to kill some time before our timed entrance to the next attraction – came in very handy. About a month ago, I managed to book us on a tour of Da Vinci’s Last Supper in the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The tickets cost fifty euros each, but we found them worth the cost, as tickets for the non-guided tours had sold out months in advance. Only later did I learn that booking opens for three months at a time and tickets sell out within hours.

We arrived on the plaza in front of the convent after eating lunch – and with an hour to spare. Not really knowing what to do with ourselves, we sat down at a café and ate cake until the meeting time. As it approached, we stood up and slowly sauntered over, giving our names to the guide and receiving little listening devices in return. We then stood on the plaza for half an hour while the guide explained the history of The Last Supper, as well as the details of our visit.

The guide explained that ever since the last restoration, visitors are only permitted to see the Last Supper in limited numbers: Every fifteen minutes, thirty tourists are allowed inside, passing through sealed chambers on the way in and out to avoid bringing in excessive humidity. Such drastic measures are necessary because of the fragile state of the work. The guide explained that contrary to the usual fresco procedure, Da Vinci painted with oil. This allowed him to experiment with the colours (as these are not properly visible on frescoes until the work is finished), but also made the painting much more vulnerable to deterioration.

Since its initial completion, the Last Supper has undergone eleven restorations, each of which – until the last – involved the application of more and more paint. The last restoration carefully removed these layers and brought to light the original work, only 15% of which remained and some of which had to be reconstructed from Leonardo’s sketches. The guide told us that the chief restorationist worked on the project for over twenty years; she lamented that she had spent more time with Da Vinci than with her children, and that for two decades she had to face hostile reporters asking after the “Lost Supper.”

Once we had spent our fifteen minutes with the Last Supper, Aron and I visited the church of the nearby convent. This was the last monument we entered on our trip. From thence, we made a 40-minute hike to our hotel, where I packed my bags and got ready for my train back to Geneva. Aron accompanied me to the train station, though he himself would only depart for the airport on the next day. Taking a bit of inspiration from the painting we had just seen, we decided to have a “Last Gelato”: Aron returned to our favourite pistachio while I tried out the cantaloupe and pineapple with ginger.