Tour of Last Supper

All the tickets may not be gone, despite the website saying so. My experience is that telephoning - during Italian working hours - you don't give a clue in your profile of where you are coming from or i would help with the local time difference for you, will get you a very helpful English speaking operator who can maybe find you a ticket or two. Even if the website says all gone.

A second to Nigel's reply. That was my experience about a month ago.

We used this outfit, http://www.darkrome.com/tours/milan-tours/best-of-milan-tour-last-supper-tickets
We had a good guide, actually a French grad student, walking tour of the ground floor of the Duomo, Victor Emmanual shopping arcade, Castello Sforza, and finally The Last Supper. He had some interesting observations of Milan, being from France. We were happy.

I also had a good experience on the Milano tour with Dark Rome, on a Sunday afternoon last October. Our guide was a young lady from Milano. For an experience beyond the tourist sites, you might like to arrive at the Piazza del Duomo maybe 45 minutes early and go into the 7-floor flagship La Rinascente department store right there on the piazza. I went up to the top floor, the food court I believe, and then worked my way down floor by floor. It was an absolute madhouse, so very crowded with shoppers, and the merchandise included just about every posh international brand and label, with very high prices. This was especially interesting for me since almost 50 years earlier, while an exchange student, I had spent a few weeks working as a floor salesperson in that very same store, now totally different and unrecognizable!

I would follow the advice to call direct. Also, www.autostradale.it offers a tour that is part bus/part walking (3 hours, 60 euros), but Rick doesn't have a recommendation for a walking-only tour.

At Nigel, I will try to call. I'm located in Milwaukee, WI. We actually have three travelers for sure, but may have a fourth joining. You mentioned they might have a couple tickets left, do you think they might have four left, or is it unlikely they have that many?

There is only one way to find our, call. When I called I asked for two tickets and they had several time slots with that many available. Those time slots could have had 4 or more tickets available.

When you call, be sure to dial "2" when you here a response. That gets you an English speaking representative.

As Bob says, the only way to know how many they have is to call. And if you have a fourth maybe person you'd better get them a ticket too and risk throwing it away rather than trying to scrape a 4th on the day.

In Milwaukee you are in the Central time zone. That is 7 hours behind Milano. If you want to call them before they close at 17:00 (5pm) you need to finish your call before 10:00 in Milwaukee. I'd call as soon as you get up, and keep trying.

So I am trying to call for tickets to the Last Supper and all I get is a message in Italian that eventually hangs up from me. Is this normal?

Two things to verify. Did you dial "2" as soon as you heard a voice? You will get a message in English on their office hours. Did you correctly account for the time zone difference?

Even then, after a short wait, you may get a message in Italian and then a dead line. This happened to me several times before I finally got through. Not sure, it may be a message saying all operators are busy and to call back later. Since this is the English line, it would be nice if they put any recorded messages on this line in English.

I hope it is just the operators are all busy, because I did hit 2 right away. I was calling from 9-10am Central time which with 7 hours time difference would be between 4-5pm Milan. I'll try earlier tomorrow.

Italy may not be on daylight saving time yet, and be sure to call during weekdays (Saturday hours may be shorter).

I appreciate those who have gone before, those thrown to the lions of the creators of the Last Supper tickets website & phone sales system, and survived to talk about it. I would not have persisted, and instead would have resorted to letting myself being fed upon by Colosseum lions—I mean scalpers. The website is a ruse, to keep you thinking the tickets dates and times are sold out, and your only recourse is to hire a tour for 10 times the cost of admission, but with the assistance of Saints to get through to an operator, you find there are loads of ticket dates and times that the site shows completely unavailable. After over 3 solid hours trying to get through their antiquated phone system on a Friday, from their 8am opening to noon, I can say that kneeling while on hold and praying for divine intervention was the only option that held hope. My phone charges show 20 attempts to hold ( I couldn't remember, being in a daze after 3am PST). The 200 disconnects (about 1 speed dial a minute) due to the system defaulting to a message that the lines are busy, in Italian, thankfully did not get charged to my calling card if I hung up quickly. The louder, welcoming voice to the ticket sales office invites you to press 2 for English, and this rare event allows you to be pacified by a piano concerto for 2 min until you are hopelessly hurled out of the system at the end of a recording in Italian with the lovely words grazie & prego. Once, it wouldn't respond to the touchtone, and the voice carried on demanding I press 1 for Italian, 2 for English. I found myself screaming the number 2 (in English, sadly) after wearing out the button on my phone. It dropped me after a few minutes in the language-unknown category of their overwhelmed, but still adamant answering system. About 1am, in desperation and sleep deprivation, I decided that I would try pressing 1 to just see if the Italian operator would speak enough English to rescue me from my plight. The first one hung up when I said hello. The second one, after about another 100 speed dial attempts, greeted me back in English and offered to help. I nearly dropped the phone. Yes, she could help me in English; of course there were loads of tickets still available for nearly every day in September, though the site showed only 4. (Mind you that would have still been enough for me to choose from, but even these 4 would direct you to a try back later notice on the site, and I did attempt 2 days of the trying-back ploy until I knew my fate was sealed for the direct approach). There were options for all different hours on a date I chose that showed was totally blacked out on their website. I eagerly pulled out my card that I had the international block removed just that morning, and here's where it get's challenging: the card did not go through their system...twice. I suddenly had unpleasant thoughts toward my local bank phone rep that walked me through the debit card unblocking process. I pulled out my credit cards. One, two, three, all declined. After the 5th card, I was wearing her down, and amid apologies she directed me back to the website. I was lost. How this could be happening? and she was going to hang up on me? I stared down at the worthless cards I had dropped to the floor. Had all failed me? placing blocks on this transaction? Chase Sapphire, 1st National, Alaska Premier Visa. How could they be that efficient to protect me from fraud? I was only able to plead with her to try the unblocked debit card one last time, but her voice was now wary after all the evidence against me. What does the decline note say? Unauthorized transaction. I found a movie, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and watched it in its entirety as I returned to my robotic speed dialing. A quick call to a CC company confirmed my cards were not blocked, & never even hit by her attempts. Eyed dazed, at the end, I got through to another agent who swiped the 1st card with no problem, & told me I MUST arrive 20m early!