I went on a pilgrimage in Europe. I spent ten weeks there and I covered three countries. The centerpiece of the pilgrimage was a 500 mile walk across the country of Spain. (It is the way of Saint James). But I did spent some time in Italy tracking down the Renaissance greats. This includes a visit to Florence where the Renaissance was centered. And of course there is a DaVinci museum there.

Note that I also have a youtube video that I took inside this museum. You can watch it without leaving this webpage. It's at the bottom of this page.

Davinci is characterized as being a polymath. And it's true, he was a genius of many talents - a renaissance man.

This musuem doesn't house any of his actual paintings or other works. It focuses on his engineering work. It has lots of information and actual models of things he designed.

And a fair portion of the museum is very hands on. They have several large rooms with his models that work. So you can turn the cranks or manipulate the device and see how it works.

The next picture shows one of the first rooms as you enter the museum. It is just a wonderful panoply of his various designs come to life.

For the museum they actually built many of his designs. I don't think many of them were actually built during DaVinci's lifetime. It is great to see them come to life now.

Here is the famous DaVinci designed tank with cannons. One thing to note about this picture is the beautiful renaissance style ceiling.

Here is one of his original drawings for it.

And here is a look inside the tank.

Video Here: