Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci

Italy's largest science and technology museum occupies the sixteenth-century monastery of San Vittore al Corpo. Named for Leonardo da Vinci, it preserves models based on his work alongside a submarine, steam locomotives and the bridge of a transatlantic liner.

Why it matters

Opened on 15 February 1953 in the former monastery of San Vittore al Corpo, the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci is the biggest institution of its kind in Italy, and it treats technology as material history rather than as a children's amusement. Its Leonardo galleries assemble machine models reconstructed from the codices, setting drawings and mechanisms side by side with the intelligence behind them. Around that core, departments covering materials, transport, energy and communication preserve objects that are often unique: the bridge of a transatlantic liner, a 1906 exhibition rail pavilion, military aircraft, and the submarine Enrico Toti — the first submarine built in Italy after the Second World War, veteran of the Italian Navy's 1968 circumnavigation of Africa, and the only vessel of its class preserved.

What to notice

The Leonardo, Art and Science section presents models based on his manuscripts, including war machines, flying devices and textile machinery. The transport collections include the bridge of the liner Conte Biancamano, the training ship Ebe and the Enrico Toti submarine. Other holdings include equipment from the Regina Margherita thermal power station, an original Macchi MC 205 fighter and a replica of the 1909 Farman biplane.

Context and history

The museum was conceived after the Second World War as a national tribute to Leonardo seen as engineer rather than painter, and it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi in 1953. The Olivetan monastery of San Vittore al Corpo, whose churches and cloisters occupy the same block on Via San Vittore, provided vast halls that could house locomotives and aircraft under roof, an unusual advantage for a city-centre museum. Collections grew through transfers from state railways, the navy and industry, so the exhibits are largely authentic decommissioned machines rather than replicas. The submarine Enrico Toti left naval service in 1997 and reached the museum in 2005, towed by sea, floated up the Po on a pontoon and hauled through Milan's streets before being built into the grounds with an access corridor. The institution is organised as a foundation.