Hello everyone, I hope you are doing great today. A few days ago I had a historical weekend. 😊 On Saturday, I enjoyed a great time with my family in Vrsac town and visited cultural and historical sights there, and on Sunday, my son had a meeting with his sports club in Kalemegdan Park, and I had a free afternoon to walk around and travel a little through history.😊

Belgrade's Kalemegdan Park is an inexhaustible historical source of inspiration. During my walk I visited the exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's machines and I will share my impressions with you today.

It is one of the most visited exhibitions in Europe and I am happy that it is held in my country as well, because I never had the chance to visit it before. The exhibition was held in Sahat Gate, a medieval gate that represents the entrance to the Upper Town of Belgrade's Kalemegdan Park.

Above the gate is the Sahat Tower, built in the 18th century in the Baroque style.

What is interesting about this tower is that it did not suffer much damage during the wars and remained quite authentic, so it represents one of the most important historical sights of Serbia.

That is why that place was chosen for the exhibition of a great artist such as Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci was a genius, and at the exhibition I read a motivational sentence that says that his genius was based on qualities and skills that we can all develop in ourselves, if we allow ourselves to be curious, physically and mentally active, sensitive, to trust our intuition , to learn from mistakes and to be guided by the fact that everything around us is interconnected.

I discovered a lot of interesting facts about him at the exhibition. For example, that he was interested in measuring time and that he designed a chronometer that measured time more precisely than a clock.

His scaling ladder is very similar to the ones used by firefighters today.

Leonardo designed various bridges, and the sketch of the arched bridge deserves special attention because the bridge that today connects Sweden and Norway was built based on that sketch.

His compound hoist is also interesting. He was interested in designing devices for lifting heavy weights with low force. He used a system of pulleys connected by a rope.

When Leonardo was a child, a hawk flew over his cradle and that is why he was interested in birds and their flight and designed various flying structures.

One of them is the ornithopter. When he tested his machine, that attempt failed and I liked the quote I read there that he said at the time: "The power of human muscles is not enough for a man to move like a bird".

The first parachute was made according to Leonardo's sketch and was successfully tested.

I was surprised by the fact that his sketch of a bicycle was unexpectedly found in the 20th century so that it did not affect the invention of the bicycle three centuries later since he drew it.

Many of his inventions were inspired by animals, so he came up with swimming gloves.

Many other amazing machines were on display, such as a file carving machine, revolving crane, anemometer, hydrometer, the wheel perpetuum mobile, spotlight, and others.

Facts I didn't know about Leonardo are that he was elegant, vegetarian, animal protector, pacifist, initiator and always hungry for knowledge.

Replicas of his most famous paintings were also exhibited.

And of course the Mona Lisa.

Although he was against war and considered it bestial madness, he invented many war machines.

Tanks were created much later, but Leonardo designed the prototype of today's tank in the 15th century.

He also designed the prototype of today's helicopter. It's fascinating.

I read another interesting his quote there: "If ever someone manages to take to the air and fulfills my eternal dream of traveling above the earth, he will do it with a structure similar to this one". And that was indeed the case. I will end the post with this quote. Don't give up on your dreams, let your imagination do amazing things, come up with useful and creative ideas and they will surely come true. One day. 😊

Thank you very much for reading.

The images and writing are original and mine.

Greetings!

Jelena