London, Leonardo’s manuscripts reunited after 400 years on a digital platform

Museo Galileo, the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Embassy of Italy in London announce the reunion of two globally significant collections of Leonardo da Vinci's writings and drawings for the first time in over 400 years in a new online platform. Leonardotheka, available since 8 June 2026, at teche.museogalileo.it/leonardo, and constitutes the most extensive resource on Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts in the world.

Marking the culmination of a 10-year project in collaboration with Royal Collection Trust, Windsor, the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, and the Biblioteca Leonardiana in Vinci, a dedicated group of Leonardo scholars and digital experts has worked to bring approximately 3,500 pages of manuscripts back together after they were separated and cut into pieces. Leonardotheka reveals new insights into Leonardo's thoughts, vision and working process through the ambitious reconstruction of select pages, digitally restoring their original appearance, to make clear the intended connections between scientific texts and figurative drawings, which had been arbitrarily separated by a later collector.

Leonardotheka's advanced tools allow users to navigate the labyrinth of Leonardo's papers with detailed data on physical and material properties (watermark imaging and digitisation by Haltadefinizione) and writing and drawing techniques; links to related sheets; transcriptions;
critical commentaries; thematic indexes; and bibliographies, including links to items available in Museo Galileo's digital library.

Ambassador Fabio Cassese, who opened the conference 'Leonardotheka, an innovative tool for the study of Leonardo's codices' at the Embassy of Italy in London on the occasion of the launch, said:
"The importance of Leonardo transcends national borders. He belongs not only to Italy, but to the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity as a whole. His work embodies the unity of art and science, imagination and observation, creativity and reason. Therefore projects such as Leonardotheka have such a crucial importance that extends well beyond academic research. The partnership between Museo Galileo in Florence, Royal Collection Trust in Windsor, and the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan is an exemplary model of this spirit of cooperation. It demonstrates how institutions from different countries can work together to make knowledge more accessible, more interconnected, and more alive."