Church in Renaissance style built by the Dominicans during the seignory of Ludovico il Moro, the most important exponent of the Sforza's dinasty, who ruled Milan after the Visconti and before Spaniards, except the brief intervals by the Ambrosian Republic before and the French afterwards. Ludovico il Moro made Milan a pole of attraction for artists and men of letters, competing with Florence for the cultural primacy of that period: following his requests worked Leonardo da Vinci and Bramante, both protagonists in carrying out the basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

Bramante completed its construction with the harmonious dome, the gallery and the cloister. Leonardo painted in the ancient refectory of the convent his celebrated Last Supper which today, after restoration works lasted more than 20 years, is finally visible in spite of damages received along the centuries and nevertheless the polemics on the invasiveness of restoration techniques chosen, which would have seriously compromised the final interventions by Leonardo in favour of the underlying layer containing the base painted by scholars and staff workers, following the cartoon by Leonardo as usual for those times, before that Michelangelo affirmed in his Roman frescoes the irreplaceable individuality of the painting genius.

The experimental technique adopted by Leonardo for this fresco (tempera protected by an oil with secret composition, which revealed less suitable to firmly cover the stucco plasters and more sensitive to climatic and environmental attacks) compromised soon its enjoyment, already in the following century. The bombings done in the Second World War and the atmospheric pollution, caused by the high industrialization of Milanese area, had definitively spoiled it and made necessary a radical restoration, which has given back to our vision an extraordinary work of art.

On the other side of the hall, on the wall in front of the Last Supper by Leonardo, there is a remarkabe fresco itself, the Crucifixion by Montorfano done in 1495, which is unfortunately obscured by the ungenerous comparison with the Leonardo's masterpiece, actually much more modern and which raised immediately the interest and the emulation by a whole generation of Lombard artists, becoming the unavoidable reference point for each artistic or cultural visit in town, as still nowadays it is.