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Italian luxury tour operator A La Carte Italy Tours offers not only private custom-made tours, but also information about Italian tourism, Italy’s industrial heritage or its discoveries . Many clients opt for a thematic tour, and the theme has quite often been Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci was a universal genius and its legacy belongs to the Italian heritage. The Camera Obscura (dark chamber) is commonly said to have been invented by him, and was certainly perfected so as to be quite ready for application to the uses of photography by Giovanni Battista della Porta of Naples, who also anticipated the opera glass, 1590.

In every mode of activity that he took up, Leonardo left behind him facilities by which others would be able to accomplish ever so much more easily than before, operations that he had found difficult until he set to work to simplify them. A famous letter from him in which he advertises his talents to the rulers of his day shows that he thought of himself as an engineer rather than as an artist. He was given a contract for digging canals and proceeded to revolutionize the modes of excavation that had been in use up to that time. The old method of carrying dirt out of excavations in baskets on the shoulders of men was entirely too slow for him, so he invented the wheelbarrow. When his cuttings became deeper and rock had to be excavated the wheelbarrow was of little use, so he invented the moveable derrick and later the self dumping derrick. He then invented locks for canals and we have from him the sketch of a scheme by which the water in rivers, very low during the summertime, might be maintained high in a channel for navigation purposes. He invented various instruments of war, scaling ladders and means of repelling besiegers and a tread mill catapult for firing a rapid succession of heavy missiles and various arrangements for throwing down scaling ladders. He is said to have been the first, at least in modern times, to use a cofferdam for building foundations at the edge of the water, and announced his ability to obtain a secure foundation for fortifications in this way. Some of his underwater structures are said to be still in existence.

Leonardo da Vinci improved nearly all the technical modes in the arts in which he engaged. He boasted of being able to cast anything in bronze and he certainly simplified a number of the processes. The machine for sawing marble, which is still used at the great marble quarries of Carrara, was invented by him. He invented machines for lifting large monolithic pillars and statues and setting them in place. Various improvements in the mixing of colors are attributed to him and he experimented with various cleansing agents for brushes and made a special kind of strong dye. There was evidently nothing in construction work that he was not quite sure that he could do, and considering that he had none of the modern mechanical means which facilitate the lifting and placing of building materials, these were difficult problems to face.

As you travel through Italy with your expert private guide of A La Carte Italy Tours, the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci will appear in front of you as if the Master was still alive.