Handpicked experience · Rome
Rome, Italy
Machines that were never built in his lifetime, two that were finally tested and worked, and notebooks cut up and scattered across Europe after his death.
Don't miss out the life-size replicas of his most renowned masterpieces are on show in various exhibition halls
Come and enjoy the works of one of the world's most famous Renaissance men firsthand
Learn the original concept behind some of today's modern machinery based on Da Vinci's creations
To bring home as a souvenir, visitors can purchase exclusive merchandise from the museum's souvenir shop
Around fifty of his inventions rebuilt at full size
Five themed halls, including flying machines and mirrors
Multimedia rooms with audio, projections and holograms
Context on his painting alongside the engineering
A digital audio guide and wi-fi included
A ticket to the Leonardo da Vinci Experience near the Vatican, where roughly fifty of his machines have been built full size from the drawings and arranged across five halls, with multimedia rooms and a phone audio guide.
You go in when it suits you and move through the halls at your own speed. The audio guide runs on your own phone, downloaded on arrival over the museum's network, so bring headphones. There is no guide with you. Most people spend an hour to ninety minutes.
What you are looking at are reconstructions. Leonardo drew constantly and built very little: the flying machines, the tank, the diving apparatus and the mechanical drum were designs on paper, most never attempted. Some cannot work as drawn — a human being cannot generate the power to weight ratio the flapping-wing machine needs, and the aerial screw would have spun the pilot rather than the rotor.
His parachute, a rigid wooden pyramid covered in cloth, was built to the original specification and jumped in 2000 from three thousand metres. It flew stably, and the tester said it was smoother than a modern canopy. His hang glider was built and flown in 2002. Both had sat on paper for five centuries without anyone checking.
One of the simplest things here is the self-supporting bridge: straight beams notched and laid across each other so that the load locks them in place, with no rope, nails or joints of any kind. It could be thrown across a river by soldiers and taken apart afterwards. Children work out how it holds up faster than adults do.
His notes run right to left in mirror writing, readable by holding them to a glass. He was left-handed, and writing that way stopped his hand dragging through wet ink — the simplest explanation, and probably the true one, though secrecy has always been the more attractive theory.
Around seven thousand two hundred pages survive, thought to be roughly a third of what he wrote. They were inherited, split, sold, rebound in different arrangements and scattered across Europe, which is why his work on a single subject can be spread over several volumes in several countries. One notebook is now owned privately by a software billionaire and shown in public every few years.
Bring a phone with charge and your own headphones, since the audio guide runs on it. The route is indoors and unaffected by weather. Cancellation is free up to a day ahead.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
No guide accompanies you. The commentary is a download you play yourself, so headphones and a charged phone matter more than an early arrival.
No — they are full-size reconstructions built from his drawings. He designed constantly and built very little; most of these were never attempted in his lifetime.
Several are physically impossible for a person to operate, and the museum says so on the labels rather than pretending otherwise. Others are sound and were simply never attempted.
Yes. His parachute was built to the original specification and jumped from three thousand metres in 2000, flying stably, and his hang glider was built and flown in 2002.
Straight beams are notched and laid across one another so the load locks them together. There is no rope, nail or joint anywhere in it, and it can be dismantled and carried away.
He was left-handed, and writing right to left kept his hand out of the wet ink. Secrecy is the more romantic explanation but the practical one is likelier.
Around seven thousand two hundred pages, thought to be about a third of the total. The notebooks were split, sold and rebound after his death, so a single subject can be spread across volumes in several countries.