The story of this place
Leonardo da Vinci painted 'The Last Supper' on the refectory wall of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie between 1495 and 1498, capturing the electric instant Christ announces one apostle will betray him. Rejecting fresco, Leonardo experimented with tempera on dry plaster, letting him work slowly—but the paint began flaking within decades, and the mural has been fragile and heavily restored ever since. Monks even cut a doorway through Christ's feet in 1652. On 15 August 1943, an Allied bomb destroyed the refectory's roof and an entire wall; sandbags stacked over the painting saved it while rubble surrounded it. Today only 25 visitors at a time, for 15 minutes, may view the ghostly, endlessly studied masterpiece.