More than 50 of Leonardo da Vinci’s most celebrated machines. An immersive journey into the creative workshop of the extraordinary Renaissance man, a one-of-a-kind exhibition that allows visitors to see up close, touch, and operate models drawn from the Vinci Codices. The experience is designed for adults, families, and schools, offering an immediate encounter with genius: observe the machine, understand the design, and infer how it works. After captivating audiences and critics in some of the world’s most important cities, the show arrives in Turin to present Leonardo as a modern inventor, capable of anticipating technologies that would only become reality centuries later.
In Turin, within the historic rooms of Palazzo Barolo, the exhibition unfolds a journey that blends Renaissance pace with a sense of future wonder. The show, The Functional Machines of Leonardo da Vinci, centers the visitor’s experience on the creative spark of a man who turned curiosity into method and experimentation into wisdom. “Wisdom is the daughter of experience,” Leonardo wrote in his notebooks, and it is precisely experience—concrete, persistent, daily—that returns to us the first true modern man, able to fuse art with science, vision with technique, and imagination with design.
In Palazzo Barolo’s rooms, visitors are welcomed by over 50 functioning models drawn from the Vinci Codices. The machines address the major themes that captivated Leonardo throughout his life: flight, war, civil engineering, hydraulics, mechanics, and anatomy. These objects are spectacular not only for their physical presence but for what they evoke: the anticipation of inventions and discoveries that would become reality only centuries later. Some of these machines have already traveled far, winning praise and audiences at the world’s leading museums, from Vienna’s Art Center to Berlin’s Art Center, from Auckland’s Memorial War Museum to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and to the Memorial War Museum of Korea in Seoul.
Each machine is built with strict historical fidelity. The construction is entirely artisanal, using period materials—wood, cotton, brass, iron, rope—and meticulous finishes, while the technical work is developed on computer to calculate proportions and mechanisms with absolute precision. This yields the robust design ethos that Leonardo pursued with discipline and wonder alike. The mechanical machines are interactive and operable by the public: a simple gesture, yet a powerful one that dispels the myth of the distant Genius and restores Leonardo as a curious, practical, hands-on thinker who observes the world, tries, errs, improves, and imagines.
The exhibitions’ itineraries on flight, water, war, and work invite visitors to meet even the “ordinary man” Leonardo—the one who records daily expenses while inventing the diving suit with a palm-gloved hand and respirator, the aerial screw that anticipates the modern helicopter, the parachute, the revolving bridge, the hydraulic saw, the prototype tank, the paddle boat, the ball bearing, and the chain element that still powers today’s bicycles. Studies and designs born in the workshop’s shadow continue to shape our world centuries later.
The curator of the show is Paolo Tarchiani. The exhibition was developed with scientific collaboration from Professor Sara Taglialagamba, director of the Centre “Armand Hammer” for Leonardo Studies at the University of California and widely regarded as one of the world’s leading scholars on Leonardo. The scientific language is sober and accessible, complemented by descriptive panels and video projections that allow visitors to step into Leonardo’s shoes, observe the design, imagine its functioning, and study its three-dimensionality through reproductions. Each piece is also accompanied by a QR code to delve into the machine’s history, references to the Codices, and the striking continuity between the Renaissance and modern times.
The primary objective of the exhibition is to engage and entertain, serving as a privileged reference point for schools and a generation raised on video games and computers. Touching, using, and trying become the most direct and lasting pathways to knowledge. For families, students, and curious visitors, it offers a chance to approach the fascinating—and in some ways still mysterious—world of one of humanity’s most emblematic figures, capturing through his machines the tireless effort of free reasoning, the perseverance of research, and the indelible mark left by an intellect that changed our idea of the future.
The show’s history goes back: the first functioning models were created between 1985 and 1990 for local scenography and exhibitions. Growing interest among Italian and European institutions led to a permanent museum in Venice (San Barnaba Church) and a long touring exhibition across Europe and beyond since the 1990s. Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, Chicago, Seattle, Auckland, and, soon, Dubai: milestones in a journey that demonstrates how Leonardo, even today, can speak to the world in the universal language of curiosity. Mechanics, hydraulics, war, flight, architecture, anatomy—no field escaped Leonardo’s curiosity, and this show places those studies at its core.
Photo credits: Palazzo Falletti di Barolo
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