ROME, May 2 (Xinhua) -- The exhibition "Leonardo's Wings. The Genius and Flight" was launched at Rome's Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci Airport Thursday on the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, happened in 1519 in the French town of Amboise.
The exhibition, held at an airport named after Leonardo Da Vinci, is a tribute to the Renaissance genius and his dream of humanity capable of flying, which led him to study the dynamics of flight and to conceive a series of futuristic flying machines long before the first manned flight.
The inaugural ceremony was presided by Rome's Mayor Virginia Raggi. "We celebrate not just Leonardo, admiring his flying machines, but also the Italian excellence represented by Leonardo all over the world," said Raggi during the press conference.
Set up in the departure areas of Fiumicino Airport's Terminal 1 and 3, the exhibition guides the visitors through da Vinci's main works about flight, featuring five accurate life-size reproductions of his flying machines - the "Flying Man", the "Man Bird", the "Medium Flying Man", the "Flying Vessel" and the "Fan Flight Machine", truely reflecting the original works of the 16th century genius.
"Flying Man", the most imposing of the flying machines conceived by da Vinci, has two 11-meter-span wings driven by man movement.
The "Man bird", set up at the departures of Terminal 3, is a bas-relief of a half-man, half-bird creature, representing da Vinci's utopia of allowing humans to fly like birds.
In the same venue, visitors can also find reproductions of the "Flying Vessel", a man-operated machine which moves two large row-like blades; the "Fan Flight Machine", the first prototype of the modern-day glider; and the "Medium Flying Man", a smaller reproduction of the model of flying wings.
The exhibition also features a multimedia area where visitors can interact with da Vinci's drawings about flight dynamics and admire the 32-page "Codex on the Flight of Birds", written by the great artist in 1505.
The exhibition was launched to enrich visitors' overall experience at the airport, according to Aeroporti di Roma (ADR), the company that runs the airport and organizes the activity in the framework of the National Program of the Committee for Leonardo's Celebrations.
The exhibition is also part of the broader series of events organized in Italy and other European countries to celebrate the Renaissance genius on his 500th anniversary. It will last until January 2020.
