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Having spent the summer in Milan, Alison Kubler asks why a city at the forefront of international fashion and design has been so slow to engage with the world of contemporary art. She looks at some of the steps now being taken to develop such an engagement, including the Commune di Milano's new contemporary art gallery, the new five yearly exhibition, Milano Europa, and the important role being played by the city 's major fashion houses, particularly Prada and Trussordi. Getting in to see Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper can be a feat matching that of making the artwork! Well, almost. Most tourists to Italy in summer resign themselves to torturous waiting in long queues to visit the hallowed Uffizi or to see the Sistine Chapel, but to visit Il Cenacolo, or Last Supper, the hapless tourist must have the patience of that other Italian painter, Michelangelo. One must first ring a phone number and pray that (a) someone answers (b) the person who answers speaks your language, in this case English and that (c) the person who speaks English is remotely interested in the fact that you have come so far to see a painting that is hanging on by a literal thread. The degree of difficulty is further heightened as one must negotiate the daily 'siesta' and Sundays and Mondays when the office is closed, so that often visitors from far-flung destinations find themselves going home, or moving on having failed to see 'it'. If you are lucky, and you manage to book a ticket, you have precisely fifteen minutes alongside a select group of twenty-five successful others to take it all in, spot the bad guy, ponder... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline