Leonardo's Milan

Casa degli Atellani

A Renaissance palace whose garden holds the replanted vineyard that Ludovico Sforza gave Leonardo in 1498.

This house was part of the Borgo delle Grazie, the neighborhood Duke Ludovico Sforza built up around the church to house his courtiers. He gave the property to the Atellani family, who filled it with parties that the chroniclers of the day described in detail. But what brings you here is behind the house. In 1498, as thanks for painting The Last Supper, Ludovico gave Leonardo a vineyard of about one hectare, roughly sixteen pertiche milanesi.

Leonardo walked these rows after long days on the scaffolding across the street. He was the son of a winegrowing family, and his notebooks are full of sketches of vines and observations about fermentation. When the French invaded Milan in 1499, Leonardo fled, but he never stopped caring about this vineyard. He fought to get it back after it was confiscated, and in his will, written a month before his death in Amboise in 1519, he divided it between his favorite pupil Salai and his servant Giovanbattista Villani.

The vineyard was forgotten for four centuries, then rediscovered in the 1920s. Genetics researchers identified the original grape as Malvasia di Candia Aromatica, and in 2015 it was replanted in the original rows. The first harvest since Leonardo's time came in 2018.