Last Supper Milan: getting there

Finding the entrance

The museum is at Piazza Santa Maria delle Grazie 2. The painting is on the wall of the former dining hall of the convent, beside the church, and the museum has its own ticket office. The museum places that ticket office in Via Ruffini, about ten metres to the left of the main museum entrance. If you have a reserved ticket to collect, go there first, not to the church door. Taxis stop at Via Ruffini 1, opposite the ticket office.

Metro, tram and bus

The museum recommends public transport, because it sits in the city centre inside Milan's Area C, which charges an entry fee for cars. Its own directions give the options in the table above. If you do drive, the museum names Via Fratelli Ruffini as the place for the nearest blue-line paid parking, and says free parking for people with disabilities is there too. There are also paid car parks in the immediate vicinity.

• Metro line 1 (red): Cadorna or Conciliazione
• Metro line 2 (green): Cadorna
• Tram 16, from Monte Velino to Stadio San Siro: stop Santa Maria delle Grazie
• Bus 50 and 169: stop Via Boccaccio

The 30-minute rule

Be at the ticket office at least 30 minutes before your visit time. The museum says anyone who isn't loses the right to enter, so plan your transport around that, not around the slot itself. Each visitor collects a ticket in person and may be asked for ID. If you booked a tour, your confirmation shows the meeting point and time for your date. Leave bulky luggage at your hotel; the museum keeps a small number of free lockers at the ticket office, for up to 60 minutes, while they last.

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Days and hours

The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 8:15 to 19:00, with last admission at 18:45. The ticket office is open from 8:00 to 18:45. It is closed every Monday, on 1 January and on 25 December, unless the Ministry of Culture says otherwise, and some days have an evening opening that is booked separately. The museum does not publish quieter or busier months, so there is no honest best season to give. What you control is the date and time you can find on the booking site.

The visit and the room's rules

A visit lasts 15 minutes, with at most 40 people at a time, for conservation reasons. The museum says air treatment and controlled visitor access keep the room's conditions stable. As part of the 1978 to 1999 restoration, the refectory was turned into a sealed, climate-controlled space. The museum's regulations are plain about behaviour: you can't sit or lie on the floor, stand on the benches, run or talk loudly, and phone ringers must be off.

• No food, drink or water bottles
• No bulky luggage
• No professional photos or video without written permission
• No music, even quietly, and no smoking, e-cigarettes included
• No animals, except guide dogs and therapy animals with medical certificates

What you are looking at

The mural measures 460 by 880 centimetres. It shows the moment after Jesus tells the twelve apostles that one of them will betray him. Leonardo painted it in tempera on a wall sealed with gesso, pitch and mastic, not as a true fresco, which let him revise but never bonded well. The apostles sit in four groups of three, and the perspective lines meet near Christ's face. Judas leans back into shadow, holding a small bag and tipping the salt cellar. The irregular arch at the base is a doorway cut through the painting in 1652 and later bricked up.

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What the wall has survived

The paint was already flaking by 1517. Several restorations followed, some of them damaging. In August 1943 an Allied bombing raid struck the convent and destroyed much of the refectory, and sandbags protected the wall that carries the painting. A major restoration ran from 1978 to 1999 under Pinin Brambilla Barcilon, and the mural went back on display on 28 May 1999. On the opposite wall is Giovanni Donato Montorfano's Crucifixion, where Leonardo added figures of the Sforza family in tempera; they have deteriorated much like the Last Supper.

Children, access and language

Babies and children need a reservation too, and they count towards the visitor cap. The museum is accessible to people with mobility difficulties. It offers a tactile model of the painting, an audio description, a guide for people with intellectual disabilities and an audio-video guide in Italian Sign Language and International Sign Language. A free official app can be downloaded before you go, and a free leaflet is handed out in several languages. The museum's own guided visits run in Italian or English, and the tours we link to are guided in English.

Before or after your visit

The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a separate building beside the museum, and church and convent are together a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its apse is attributed to Donato Bramante, though some dispute that, and the Sforza dukes planned the church as a family burial place. The museum's pages don't cover the church's opening times, so check on the day. The museum's bookshop is only for visitors with a ticket. The walking tour we list first moves on to the Sforza Castle, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and La Scala.

Who this isn't for

If you want long, quiet time with a painting, 15 minutes will feel short, and no ticket extends it. If your plans fall on a Monday, the museum is closed. If you need a plan that can move, museum tickets can't be changed once bought. If you are driving into the centre, remember Area C. And if you can't leave a large bag anywhere, sort that out first: luggage isn't allowed in, and the lockers are limited.