“Run from the precepts of those speculators, whose reasons are not confirmed by experience”.

With this admonishment by Leonardo, displayed in the hall entrance of Palazzina Uzielli,the Museo Leonardiano welcomes visitors in its new exhibition spaces, created thanks to a renovation project which combines the philological study of Leonardo's mechanics with the use of digital and virtual technology.

In the new rooms, videos, sounds, projections and digital animations create suggestions and offer new ways of getting to know the figure of Leonardo the inventor and engineer.

LEONARDO AND MECHANICS

A true incipit of the museum tour, the immersive video 'Leonardo and Mechanics' introduces the main theme of the collection.The digital processing with a sequence of Leonardo's drawings presented according to the themes addressed by the museum,restores Leonardo's continuous and passionate research into motion and the causes that generate it.  Every single mechanical element of Leonardo's designs seems to come to life thanks to the addition of sound elements,which translate the individual graphic elements presented into sounds.

CLOCKS

The section, reorganised and integrated with a unique model of anchor escapement for a clock, contains a full-wall video projection illustrating Leonardo's original research into the automation of clocks and astronomical instruments, which he surprisingly relates to the mechanisms of textile machines, also on display in the Museum in the previous rooms.

LEONARDO. ANATOMY OF MACHINES

Located on the first floor of the Palazzina Uzielli, the new section is dedicated to the machine elements that Leonardo studied with an approach very similar to the one he adopted to understand the functioning of the human body. Digital reproductions accompany the series of 16 models on display in a comparison between the real and the virtual, enabling visitors to imagine and fully understand how the machines work. An immersive application with an Oculus virtual reality visor allows visitors to go beyond the real visit experience and touch, operate and even dismantle four gears designed by Leonardo.

The new rooms, created with the contribution of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze  and the Regione Toscana for the Tuscan Network of Scientific Museums, are part of the museum itinerary, which also includes the Conti Guidi Castle, and can be visited with the entrance ticket to the Museum.