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Babel and Babylon

Babel and Babylon

Aztec cities

Aztec cities

Heavenly Jerusalem

Heavenly Jerusalem

The Fujian Tulou

The Fujian Tulou

Utopia

Utopia

Romorantin, capital of a kingdom...

Romorantin, capital of a kingdom...

The city of brotherly love

The city of brotherly love

Saint Petersburg, Peter's great city

Saint Petersburg, Peter's great city

Industry, socialism and utopia

Industry, socialism and utopia

Taking technology to new heights

Taking technology to new heights

Home sweet home

Home sweet home

A towering challenge...

A towering challenge...

New towns

New towns

Conjuring capitals

Conjuring capitals

Auroville: "divine anarchy"

Auroville: "divine anarchy"

Private cities

Private cities

Dubai: miracle or mirage?

Dubai: miracle or mirage?

All eyes on the horizon

All eyes on the horizon

Romorantin, capital of a kingdom...

The city is a political brainchild but also the reflection of amazing creativity in technology. The great Leonardo da Vinci could not help but take up the challenge. When King Francis I embarked on plans to make Romorantin—a small commune in the Loir-et-Cher region of France—the capital of his kingdom, he offered Leonardo a chance to get involved. The artist gave his patron a battery of creative technology that would make any modern-day city proud, including two-way traffic, waste-disposal systems and even express connections between European cities through a cleverly designed network of canals.

The man who paved the way?

"And understand that he who would go through the whole place by the high level streets can use them for this purpose, and he who would go by the low level can do the same. By the high streets no vehicles and similar objects should circulate, but they are exclusively for the use of gentlemen. The carts and burdens for the use of convenience of the inhabitants have to go by the low ones."

From the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Some ideas were very close to realities seen in today's cities, proving that today's "impossible dream" can provide tomorrow's solutions, with a little help from advances in technology.

Romorantin

Turning Romorantin into a dream capital was a real challenge for the Tuscan master. Thirty years earlier, he had drawn up plans for the perfect city for Ludovico il Moro, but the project was stymied by Italy's wars... The city of Romorantin was to feature many waterways, in line with Leonardo's belief that all urban planning should incorporate flow: the flow of people on various levels, taken through large arcades between the noble and common quarters, the flow of goods and provisions, disposing of waste and channeling odors. His plans for Romorantin's stables further reflect this sense of movement that permeated every aspect of his designs: Leonardo had foreseen the use of machines to lift the hay to the loft, where it would then be distributed by narrow pipes to the troughs, along with automatic cleaning systems.

Extract from Sur les traces de Léonard de Vinci sur les bords de Loire et de Saône by Pascal Brioist, Senior Lecturer at the University of Tours

Plans for a city, taken from Manuscript B
Leonardo da Vinci

It is hard to describe in a few words the life of a man as prolific as Leonardo da Vinci...
Born in 1452 near Florence, he was a leading figure of the Quattrocento—first and foremost a talented painter who trained alongside the likes of Botticelli and Le Peruguin.

Blessed with a towering intelligence and a keen eye, he was also an outstanding scientist, as demonstrated by his private notebooks, written in Italian and in the dialect of Lombardy. An artist, engineer, architect, botanist, anatomist, philosopher and poet, Leonardo da Vinci is a shining example of the thirst for knowledge and the appeal of universalism that came to embody the European Renaissance.

Admired by his peers, he acquired a succession of patrons throughout his life. Educated in Florence, welcomed in Milan by Ludovico Sforza, and employed as architect and engineer to the Venetians, he also served the Borgia family and Pope Leo X. He spent the last years of his life in the service of King Francis I of France, a lover of Italian culture, who appointed Leonardo "First Painter, Engineer and Architect of the King" and gave him the estate of Clos Lucé near Amboise, where he died in 1519.