“The Last Supper,” machine guns, “Mona Lisa,” armoured tanks, assault chariots, Vitruvian Man, crossbows. Rambling through Clos Lucé, Leonardo’s house and gardens in France, I pondered how one brilliant man’s soul embraced such beauty and beastliness at the same time.
During our 11-day road trip from Portugal, through northern Spain and southwestern France to the city of Tours, we also encountered other places with contradictions: Bayonne, Hendaye, and, most poignantly, Gernika, the bombed town made famous by Picasso.
But at Chateau du Clos Lucé, where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last three years, that beauty-beast dichotomy was peacefully presented, almost clandestinely.
The famed painter spent most of his life in Italy, but accepted an invitation from King Francis I of France to live at Clos Lucé in the village of Amboise. After three years of painting, dreaming, drawing, inventing, researching, experimenting, and sharing his discoveries with Francis, Leonardo died and was buried there.
We set out to learn more about this complicated, many-faceted man.
Chateau du Clos Lucé
Built of pink brick and white tufa stone, the Chateau du Clos Lucé had been a summer home for France’s kings, including King Francis I who invited Leonardo to live there.
From Tours, where we stayed with our dear friend and former neighbour Maxine, we took the train about 20 minutes to Amboise. This adorably medieval village of tidy aspect encompasses two noteworthy chateaus: the Chateau d’Amboise, where Leonardo is buried, and the Chateau du Clos Lucé, where we headed first.
In Leonardo’s final home, the competing facets of this genius’s mind struck me. How could the creator of “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper” also design machines to terrorize horses and more efficiently kill people? Did evil lurk in his soul? Was he simply a product of his time, when warring Italian dukes, hangings and other executions were commonplace? Was he more focused on developing the possibilities than the reality of their use?
Most of what I’d known about Leonardo concerned his paintings – especially his novel sfumato technique (of blurring the edges) that rendered Mona Lisa’s smile so enigmatic. And whenever I heard or read anything concerning Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, Leonardo’s fresco painting “The Last Supper” is the image that sprang to my mind.
“All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.” – Leonardo da Vinci
Touring Clos Lucé gave us a more in-depth understanding of his many other interests, in architecture, botany, anatomy, urban planning, hydraulics, mathematics, many types of engineering, and military machinery. Self-taught, by reading widely and studying all his surroundings, he took inspiration from nature.
Like many European monarchs who admired the Italian Renaissance, French kings had previously invited artists and writers to move to France so they could influence Renaissance styles and ways of thinking. That’s why King Francis I – a big Leonardo fan and arts patron – offered him the Chateau du Clos Lucé to hang his brimmed beret. Francis also named Leonardo “Premier Painter, Engineer and Architect to the King” and granted him a generous annual allowance that gave him the time and freedom to think and dream.
Leonardo arrived in 1516, toting “Mona Lisa,” “The Virgin and the Child with Saint Anne,” and “Saint John the Baptist” – all of which are now housed in the Louvre in Paris. He also brought some of his notes, sketches and manuscripts. Francis, who lived in the nearby Chateau d’Amboise, visited often via a (rumoured) tunnel that connected the two chateaus.
Leonardo’s bedroom
Leonardo died in this room, in a bed that would have looked much like this Renaissance four-poster carved with cherubs and sea creatures.
We paid our entrance fee, climbed the watchtower, traversed an open gallery with splendid views down into the gardens, and admired the chapel’s beautiful frescoes, painted by pupils of Leonardo.
The tour route took us through some rooms unrelated to Leonardo, where we examined the Renaissance-era furniture, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, ceramics, and carvings. But the highlights for me were the rooms where our main man spent significant time.
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” – Leonardo da Vinci
We entered Leonardo’s bedroom, the very room where he died on May 2, 1519 at age 67 – the same age as I was. That gave me pause, to consider what I’d accomplished with my life within the same passage of time. Even though he died young (by my standard), he achieved so much.
A painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres illustrated Francis holding Leonardo as he died. Leonardo bequeathed all his notebooks to his faithful disciple Francesco Melzi.
A painting hung to the left of the bed showed Francis holding Leonardo as he lay dying. In fact, the king was not there. However, decades later, legend said that Francis had held his dying friend. Several painters and even tapestry weavers illustrated the near-mythic scene.
The beamed ceiling and draperies hung on the four-poster bed gave a sense of warmth within the stone-walled and terracotta-tiled room.
I stood at his bedroom window, where Leonardo might also have stood to gaze at the Chateau d’Amboise, perhaps thinking about Francis’ request to design Romorantin – an ideal city to rival Rome.
Leonardo’s workshops
Leonardo’s desk held drawing instruments (rulers, triangles, ink, feather quills, and a leather-bound notebook), while his bulletin board displayed some of his 100,000 drawings.
Three connecting rooms were his actual workshops, where he painted, thought, experimented, and worked on commissioned projects. At his wide wooden desk and bulletin board, we glimpsed the last drawings he’d made at Clos Lucé: cats, dragons and other fantastic animals, arms, and sketches for portraits.
Surprisingly, Leonardo also got into the party-planning business! He designed elaborate costumes and theatrical sets and machinery for feasts and masked balls. He also directed extravaganzas like the Feast of Paradise for the king.
We wandered slowly, examining the copies of “Saint John the Baptist” and “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne” set upon easels. He continued touching up these masterpieces until he died. Easels, paintbrushes, preparatory drawings, wood panels, and pigments for preparing paints tried to make it see like he’d just stepped out for a coffee.
“The desire to know is natural to good men.” – Leonardo da Vinci
As a fellow notetaker, I was inevitably drawn to glass display cases holding his notebooks. They stood on edge with the pages splayed open and I tried to sneak peeks to see what he’d written. I was disappointed that they were all copies, but fascinated to learn that he wrote backwards – so people couldn’t easily read his notes, so he couldn’t be accused of heresy, or because he was left-handed?
He had to have been intensely curious, with a mind constantly in motion, writing and drawing in his notebooks every day. He was also a procrastinator (oh, how I could relate!), and left many projects unfinished, including paintings.
Leonardo’s Cabinet of Curiosities held souvenirs of the natural world, which he studied all his life.
A second workshop room held his library, with books by Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Ptolemy, Pliny the Elder, Vitruvius and others. At about 200 books, a library that size was quite rare for the times.
We also saw his Cabinet of Curiosities that displayed fossils, astrolabes and compasses, shells, stones, and a human skull. He studied human and animal anatomy so he could paint more closely to reality, to display movement and strength. He illustrated the theory of proportions by drawing the now-iconic Vitruvian Man.
The third workshop room had been made into a studio showing a ghostly recreation of the meeting in 1518 between Leonardo and the Cardinal of Aragon, a grand prince of the Renaissance. (See main photo above.) Leonardo apparently showed him the three masterpieces he’d brought to Clos Lucé. We made our way through other rooms, such as the Renaissance Great Hall, where Leonardo would have conversed with Francis and all the other ambassadors and artists who traveled to there to pick his brain.
In the kitchen, we saw where Mathurine, Leonardo’s cook, prepared his vegetarian meals. At least, it’s rumoured that he was vegetarian… and gay. Add that rumour to the legend that Francis was present at his death, and that they visited via a tunnel… My suspicions about the details grew.
Models of his machines
A basement room displayed a small model of his armoured tank (note the cannons poking out under the lower edge) while the garden revealed a full-size model.
Down in the Clos Lucé basement, four rooms held forty models built from Leonardo’s drawings with materials from his time. (Later, in the garden and in a separate exhibit hall, we saw even more models – life-size versions.)
I found it fascinating, yet troubling too, to learn that Leonardo’s genius and creativity encompassed not only the tenderness and love shown in his paintings but also extensive war machinery and the thought that went into them.
For example, the four-wheeled armoured tank, with guns all around, could be moved by humans or animals. Shooters took shelter inside. An observation turret poked up like a crown.
“One may hold bellows in them to spread terror among the horses of the enemy, and one may put carabineers [armed soldiers] in them to break up every company,” Leonardo wrote. Nice sales pitch.
His resumé of military designs included catapults, crossbows, cannons, assault chariots, machine guns, and the wheel-lock musket, which replaced the use of fuses. Even his various flying machines were designed to rain down bombs and arrows.
One machine gun fired in multiple directions, to more effectively take down forces advancing in a line. Another had three rotating racks of guns, to permit “continuous fire by simultaneous cooling and reloading,” said the information panel, adding that it anticipated “the famous ‘organs of Stalin’ used by the Soviets as rocket-guns during the last world war.”
This machine guns had 10 barrels so it could shoot in an arc.
We also examined Leonardo’s more peaceful inventions: what’s touted as the first car, a bicycle, paddle boat, parachute, life preserver, and several types of bridges.
In the car (which looks more like a flat trailer with cogs than a car), the “movement is transmitted to the back wheels by stretching alternately the spring of the right wheel and then the spring of the left wheel,” said the info panel.
His round life preserver is still seen on beaches and around swimming pools today, to throw to flailing swimmers. He also drew webbed gloves and floats for walking on water. He designed a breathing apparatus for divers: a floating dome of cork had flexible tubes hanging underneath to allow divers to breathe underwater.
The steam-hammer used a system of blocks and ropes to pull a load up, then fall with all its weight. The waywiser, which looked like a wheelbarrow with cogs on the side and top, was an odometer to measure distance travelled.
With his mechanical engineering background, Bill found the models were a highlight of his visit.
“His realization that air behaved as a fluid, allowed him to design the parachute,” said Bill. “And although his aerial screw didn’t work, it pointed the way to helicopters. Very cool.”
Models included the revolving crane (left), car (middle), and the aerial screw (right).
Had Leonardo been 500 years ahead of his time? Not entirely. He was a man of his time who read and observed widely, then synthesized what he’d learned into his own theories and designs.
For example, he had observed the huge cranes and winches developed by Filippo Brunelleschi to help erect the dome of Florence’s cathedral. Leonardo later expanded upon that to develop his revolving crane that could pivot 360 degrees.
He learned about geometric perspectives from Leon Battista Alberti, about how to apply abstract theories to painting from Piero Della Francesca, and about military fortification and civil construction from Francesco di Giorgio and Bramante, said an information panel.
Although I’d known before about Leonardo’s mechanical inventions, albeit not the full extent of his killing knowledge, I had not known about his architectural prowess. For example, in a 1490s sketch of a stable for war horses, he included wastewater drains and a system to lift hay up to the attic and then down through pipes to the feeders. (War horses were precious so owners took great care of their hygiene.)
“Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci
He lived in a time of plagues, when the princes of what later became Italy all wanted to build their own cities. In 1485, for the Duke of Milan, he designed a city on two levels: below held the pipes, roads, sewers, industrial and commercial activities; above were the palaces and gardens for the wealthy.
Later, he designed the entire city of Romorantin for Francis I, right down to the smallest details of windows and fireplaces, with innovations such as quadruple revolution staircases.
Despite all his accomplishments in other areas, painting was his favourite. “Art above science, and painting above other arts, since it communicates knowledge to all generations of the world,” he said.
Leonardo designed far more machines than paintings. Indeed, you could describe him as more engineer than painter. Scholars debate the actual numbers, but just 15 to 20 paintings are firmly attributed to him, with others that are in question. However, he also left about 100,000 drawings and sketches.
Leonardo’s gardens
Walkways and gardens planted with flowers related to Leonardo’s paintings encircled the misty pond.
“Leonardo da Vinci, an environmentalist ahead of his time, strove obsessively to discover the essence of all life, with a great respect for living beings,” said the guidebook. How did that square with designing machines to kill people more effectively? Is that what paid the bills then? Leonardo the military engineer had rather unsettled me. So, it was a relief to emerge from the basement warmongery out into the peaceful gardens, to see his softer side.
“Nature is filled with infinite causes that experiments have never demonstrated.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
I imagined Leonardo wandering amongst the shrubbery with his head in the clouds, stopping to take notes or make sketches of the flowers and animals he saw, observing the water in motion. An information panel set into a garden where water curved into a pond told me that Leonardo studied swirling water so he could paint curling hair better, but also to design pumps, paddle boats and drainage systems.
We strolled around a pond, mist rising in lovely swirls, softening the hard edges of the bridge – just like the sfumato technique he used for Mona’s smile.
Information panels in the garden – this one about the “The Virgin of the Rocks” and “Ginevra da’ Benci” – had little doors to open for more information about botanical motifs.
We crossed several bridges he’d designed, including a swing bridge. I climbed to the second level of his solid oak bridge with triangular braces, a design still widely used today.
The gardens were planted with trees, flowers, and shrubs that Leonardo sketched and painted: centuries-old pines, Italian cypresses, yews, Madonna lilies, yellow irises, violets, alders, cyclamen, columbine, and the famous pink Mona Lisa rose.
Panels set amongst the flowers explained how Leonardo had depicted various floral and leaf motifs, with symbolic and religious meanings, in the backgrounds and around the edges of his paintings. I had never noticed those motifs before.
For example, in a portrait of Ginevra da´ Benci (daughter of a rich Florentine merchant), he surrounded her with junipers – aka genever, a symbol of virtue and a clever pun. In various other paintings, the lily stood for purity, cyclamen represented love and devotion, the passion flower for Christ’s Passion, acanthus symbolizing the resurrection.
I still found it difficult to reconcile all these facets of Leonardo – his sense of beauty but also the mind concerned with killing. Flowers and machine guns. Juniper and tanks. Quiet smiles and killing efficiency.
A tunnel to the Chateau d’Amboise?
Did Leonardo and Francis really visit using this tunnel-like entrance between Clos Lucé and the Chateau d’Amboise?
“A must-see: The entrance to the secret underground passageway,” said the Clos Lucé guidebook, leading me to believe the rumours were true. Francis and Leonardo could visit each other without guards and nosy neighbours watching.
The tunnel-like entrance in the basement of Clos Lucé certainly looked like compelling evidence for the connection, although the guidebook did go on to refer to the tunnel as a “legend.”
Once we left Clos Lucé and walked towards the Chateau d’Amboise, the topography itself argued against a tunnel. It would have to be way too long and the elevations just didn’t seem right.
The clincher came during our “Behind the Scenes of History” guided tour that promised we’d see the Chateau’s underground passages and towers. (The tour was in French, but I didn’t care; I just wanted a glimpse of the tunnel).
By the end of our tour, with nary a tunnel-glimpse at all, I finally asked our guide about it.
“It’s a myth,” she stated bluntly.
Whether or not Leonardo snuck through a tunnel to visit Francis, the two friends did enjoy a close relationship.
Chateau d’Amboise
Within the Chateau d’Amboise grounds, Leonardo (centre) gazes across the lawn at the Chapel of Saint-Hubert (left), which houses his tomb (right).
Leonardo said in his will, dictated just nine days before he died, that he wanted to be buried in the Collegiate Church of Saint Florentin, on the grounds of the Chateau d’Amboise. The bereft Francis made sure that wish came true. According to the information brochure, a procession of monks and beggars accompanied his body from Clos Lucé to the Saint Florentin crypt.
But Saint Florentin was demolished between 1806 and 1810. Half a century later, excavators found bones presumed to be Leonardo’s, since they were next to a tombstone with fragments of his name. In 1874, his skeleton was reburied in a tomb in the Saint Hubert Chapel, also on the Chateau grounds, where they remain today. That’s where we headed next.
The Chateau was built initially as a fortress (later turned into more of a palace) on a high rocky promontory overlooking the Loire River. Its protective walls extend the cliff edges upwards, making it seem even higher and more imposing.
As we wound our way up cobbled paths into the Chateau grounds, we spied the gleaming white tufa-stone Saint Hubert Chapel right away. Teetering on the very edge of the chateau’s walls, the small chapel is elaborately embellished with intricate stone carvings and tall stained-glass windows.
We stepped into the cool interior and found Leonardo.
Saint Hubert Chapel’s soaring gothic arches and stained-glass windows looked down on Leonardo’s marble marker.
The marble marker on the floor with a medallion and profile in relief surprised me. It was so plain and simple. You’d think this brilliant man would have been memorialized with a huge sarcophagus, protected for eternity by angels and cherubs.
Still, the setting was appropriate. Pointed flamboyant-Gothic-style arches soared above him and coloured light shone upon him from the stained-glass windows. The chapel is beautiful.
Out in the Chateau’s gardens, a bust of Leonardo marked the spot where he’d first been buried. I stood for a few minutes in front of it, trying to catch his eye.
“For each of us, the death of this man is to be mourned, for it is impossible that life will produce another like him,” Francis allegedly said.
I believe he was right.
We visited Amboise in June 2026. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.
