LOIRE VALLEY: CHATEAU du CLOS LUCE

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 Chateau du Clos Luce

Our second adventure today was in the city of Amboise located on the River Loire. The sun was shining when we arrived contrary to weather reports. We visited the home where Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his life having left Rome with several of his favorite paintings, including the Mona Lisa. He was offered the position of engineer, architect, and painter to the French King who enjoyed his intellectual company in the early sixteenth century.

The house and grounds display a vast exhibit of the many designs by Leonardo with both drawings and models; he was prolific in his advanced thinking and interestingly wrote in mirror image. There were many groups of school children in this museum, all working on projects in various rooms with their teachers. Although he died more than five hundred years ago, he is credited with inspiring the technology behind many of the developments of the modern age such as helicopters and airplanes; as well as many different types of guns and other means of defense.