Earlier this year (2012) we went to a superb (if somewhat over crowded) exhibition at the National Gallery in London of the majority of Leonardo’s surviving paintings. Included within the exhibition, was a full scale copy of Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” painted by Rizzoli in about 1520. This led us to decide to go to Milan to see the original plus a number of other Leonardo related things and also to go to a performance at Teatro alla Scala because it is one of the great opera houses in the world.
We are fortunate in that a great friend of ours, Luisa, lives in Milan and using her local
knowledge, she designed a four day tour for us which covers all of the key elements of Leonardo and of Milan. Hence the trip; her plan; and the blog.
The plan is:
| Day 0 | Evening | Arrive |
| Day 1 | Morning | The Last Supper |
| Afternoon | Duomo | |
| Evening | La Bohème at Teatro alla Scala | |
| Day 2 | Morning | Pinacoteca Ambrosiana lunch at Ristorante la Rinascente |
| Afternoon | Castello Sforzesco | |
| Evening | The Navigli | |
| Day 3 | Pinacoteca di Brera | |
| Monza | ||
| Day 4 | Morning | Museum at La Scala |
| Afternoon | Depart |
Getting to Milan from London was cheap (£49 return); conveniently timed (mid afternoon flights); and easy with “the airline which everyone loves to hate but loves to fly” aka RyanAir. Although they fly to Milan Bergamo which is the furthest from Milan of its three airports, one of two competing coach services (costing only €4.50 each way) takes less than 1 hour to get us to Milan Central Station which itself is only 10 minutes walk from our hotel – the Hotel Berna (chosen because of its location (very central), TripAdvisor reviews (great) and price (medium)).
And so, six hours after closing our front door in England, we open the door of our hotel room, ready for four days of intensive sightseeing and education whilst remembering that Leonardo is credited with saying “Learning never exhausts the mind” (although the packed nature of this trip will probably exhaust our bodies).
Two websites which we found useful when doing our pre-trip background research are “History of Milan” and “Leonardo in Milan”.
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