Milan, Italy - Petersontravels

We are not usually fans of big cities, but this is one of those that you just have to visit at least once. On this trip we are actually visiting it twice, since the wine tour that got us to come to Italy in the first place departs from Milan. Details about that later.

We are touring for the first two weeks of this trip with our friends Eric and Karmenn Hanson, from Kingston, WA. I met Eric years ago while playing an online game called Quake 2 Lithium, and suffice it to say that’s a long story on it’s own, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Kim and I are staying in an AirBNB near the Duomo. Here is the view from our balcony.

I wish the rest of the place was as nice as the view, but it’s an old building that makes a lot of odd noises, and the place we are staying needs a ton of work. It’s well located though!

We took a stroll through the Galleria Vittorio Emaneule, which translates to “You don’t have enough money to shop here” in English. Regardless, it’s a beautiful spot.

We had dinner near the Basilica San Lorenzo Maggiore, which is beautiful church, particularly at night.

This church is one of the oldest in Milan, built between the 4th and 5th centuries, right about the time Nancy Pelosi was born. Right behind where I took this photo are some Roman columns which were relocated here in the 4th century to form an atrium in front of the Basilica. The columns were originally part of other Roman buildings from the 2nd or 3rd centuries, most likely from a pagan temple elsewhere within Milan. Seems like somebody is always stealing shit from the pagans!

The next day we had a booked tour of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, located adjacent to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

We had a guided tour which I thought was well worth it. She droned on about the artistic nature of the piece moreso than the history and how poorly the painting survived the elements since it was painted on plaster. With Milan being a very humid city, pieces of the painting starting falling off within 20 years. The painting that exists now is heavily restored, with very little of the original work remaining. The story of the damage to the painting and the restoration efforts is worth a quick read on Wikipedia:

Last Supper Damage and Restoration

Regardless of how much his original work remains, if any, the fact that Da Vinci himself was working in this very room is pretty special.

Aside from the effects of time, the church was bombed during WWII, but miracuously, one of the few walls that survived is the one with the painting.

Make sure you book your tour well in advance. When we went to pick up our tickets, a couple in front of us thought they could just walk up and buy tickets, and were told the next available tickets were at least a week from then.

We were ushered into the hermetically sealed room in a group of about 15 people, and we could only stay for 15 minutes, but that’s far better than standing there with 100 people….or 1200 in the case of the human crush at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre!

We also toured the grounds of the Castello Sforzesco, which is a huge park in the middle of Milan attached to the Castle. It’s free to tour, and well worth it. At the northwestern end of the park is a mini Arc de Triumphe, called the Arco della Pace (Arch of Peace), which was requested by Napoleon to celebrate his victories during the short lived Italian Republic (1802-1805). The construction was stopped after he was defeated by the Austrian Empire, but they then completed it with bas-reliefs depicting Napoleon’s defeat. He who wins the war, writes the history…or in this case finishes the monument!

The last part of the day was spent at the Monumental Cemetary, which I found to be very interesting (Eric loved it so much he went back again today).

This place is HUGE, and could take days to explore. I’ve never seen so many artistic tombs and monuments in one place. It was rather mind blowing, and this place is also free. What’s not the like!