Sightseeing in Milano

After my language struggles on Thursday, I was happy to take a day in Milano mostly to myself. Even before leaving Minneapolis, I had made reservations to view the Last Supper, located at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. It was about a half hour walk, so I took the opportunity to go at a leisurely pace, enjoying the activity on the street along the way.

I've come to the conclusion that Milanese women are impossibly thin and chic and get that way from walking everywhere and smoking entirely too many cigarettes. I don't know how many women passed me by, walking with apparent ease in stiletto-heeled boots, looking beautifully put together while pulling drags off their cancer sticks.

I arrived at the church where the Last Supper is located with plenty of time to spare. The rectory where the Last Supper is located is in the lighter colored restored building to the left of the main church. A small open air market was set up in the square opposite the church, so I photographed some of the stalls and patrons.

This stall was selling all kinds of pickled and canned peppers, tomatoes, beans, and so on.

I wish I were staying in Milan a little longer so I could buy some of these yummy sausages and cheeses for meals.

This guy was whacking off pieces of focaccia for customers with a machete-sized knife.

I saw lots of people biking around Milano, more than in past years. It's not uncommon to see very stylishly dressed women in high heels or men in finely tailored suits pedaling down the road. These women have seats on their bikes to haul their kids around. They seemed to run into each other by chance and spent a long time visiting. 

After checking out the market, I still had time to go inside the church building. It is a bright, airy church with sculptures and paintings in the niches along the sides.

The Last Supper itself is a choreographed event. I remember simply walking in with Gauss's aunt, Adriana, the first time I came to Milano many years ago. However, it was in the process of being restored, and much of the work was obscured. Now, for 25 Euros, I was able to purchase a ticket in advance. The routine is this: Show up at least 20 minutes before your ticketed time to check in. Ten minutes before viewing, you are expected to be in a waiting room, and about two minutes before your actual viewing time is to begin, your group is herded into the first of two sealed glass chambers. 

Once everyone enters the back doors, they are closed, and you all wait together for a moment. Then the doors at the front of the chamber open, you all go to the next chamber, and once everyone is in the second chamber, it is closed, too. At that point, you can see that the group in the actual viewing area has been summoned to leave. Once they are out of the refectory where the fresco is located, your group is allowed in.

The fresco itself is strikingly brighter than what I remember seeing 30 years ago, but the restoration removed many layers of paint that filled in missing parts, so the work has an almost pointillist quality. This gives the whole thing a mysterious feel—you are seeing the last supper but you are not seeing all of it, and you must use your imagination to complete it. 

On the opposite wall of the refectory is another fresco done by a different artist in the style and medium most popularly used at the time. It's an excellent lesson in art history to look at one and then the other. Compared with the flat, medieval-looking treatment of people and buildings in the other fresco, the Last Supper seems positively revolutionary. In it, Da Vinci has mastered the new vocabulary of perspective, and you see that perspective reinforced by the windows along the side walls, the ceiling coffers, and also, cleverly, in the folds of the tablecloth upon which the last supper is laid.

There is just enough time to absorb these two frescoes when a recorded female voice announces “Visit is over” and directs everyone to clear the room for the next group.

I walked a little further into downtown  and passed one of my favorite places, Passerini. They sell lovely desserts and killer gelato. It was a little early in the day for a macaron or a dish of gelato, so I hope I can go there tomorrow.

No visit to Milano is complete without walking into the Duomo, the city's enormous central cathedral. It is spiky and gothic inside and out, a massive high sanctuary held up by columns the size of redwoods and dimly lit by sunlight that manages to permeate the jewel-toned stained glass windows. The sides of the sanctuary are lined with small chapels, confessionals, and the crypts of sanctified priests, including a couple in crystal boxes. These corpses are dressed in fine robes, and their faces are covered with metal death masks. The only visible flesh is the shriveled hands resting on their bellies.

I didn't want to use a flash inside the church, so the moving people are a bit of a blur. However, I left them in to give an idea of the scale of the columns that hold up the roof of this gothic behemoth.

It's tempting to always look up, but the floor is full of beautiful stonework and crypts of bishops, cardinals, and other muckety-mucks from the church heirarchy.

I saw this little bull image on the floor just as I was ready to leave the building.

I took the metro back to the neighborhood where I am staying. I had made arrangements to have lunch with Adriana, as Costanza is in Rome at a conference and Gianni is in Malta, enjoying a trip awarded to him by his company. At 88, he still goes to work every day. I walked to Adriana's apartment, and held her arm as we made our way several blocks to a pizzeria. Adriana is 90 and had a hip replacement two years ago. She is amazingly spry and strong. We walked slowly, but we must have covered at least 2 kilometers. She has a good appetite and ate an entire pizza. 

For all the things I have done on this trip, the stroll with Adriana has been one of the most enjoyable. There was no pressure; the pace was leisurely and we patched together a conversation in basic Italian and simple English. I saw her to her door so she could take her afternoon nap and then returned to Costanza's apartment, where I am staying. I fell asleep, too, a welcome respite from the work of thinking in another language.

Throughout this trip I have experienced feelings that I haven't had since I was a child. Since nearly every plant and animal in Australia was new to me, there it was the novelty of seeing something that I had never seen before. In Istanbul, I awoke each morning to the call to prayer, adjusting my senses to women in headscarves, imams singing from minarets, and piles of spices in the bazaar. In Italy, like a toddler, I struggle to put together a sentence and make myself understood. These experiences kick the legs out from under me, but in a good way. It's not a bad thing when, at age 58, I have to stretch to make sense of things.