# What did Leonardo da Vinci write in his notebooks? Canonical: https://zestasy.com/wiki/leonardo-notebooks/ Section: Zestasy Wiki > Books & ideas · Updated: 2026-10-13 · Publisher: Zestasy *Zestasy Wiki: our reference answers. Checked for facts and sources; less curated than the magazine.* Almost everything that caught his attention. Leonardo da Vinci's surviving notebooks, thousands of pages in total, mix studies of anatomy, flowing water, birds in flight, flying machines, weapons, geometry, optics, botany, architecture and the craft of painting, with drawings and notes side by side. Most of it is written right to left in his famous mirror script, and none of it was organised into finished books in his lifetime. Leonardo is remembered as a painter, but if you measure by pages rather than pictures, he was mostly a note-taker. He filled sheet after sheet with what he saw, what he wondered and what he wanted to build, and those pages now sit scattered across museums and libraries in Europe and the United States. ## What is in them The surviving material is grouped into about [eleven major manuscripts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci%27s_notebooks), known as codices, amounting to thousands of pages. A rough tour: - **Anatomy.** Detailed studies of the human body, including the famous drawings of a fetus in the womb, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor. - **Water.** How rivers flow, how water can be moved and raised, designs for hydraulic devices, fountains and water clocks. - **Flight.** Birds in relation to wind, and designs for flying machines, including the so-called helicopter. - **Machines and engineering.** Mechanisms, weapons, military engineering, a submarine, a diving apparatus, the casting of the great Sforza monument. - **Geometry and volume.** Pages on measuring solid shapes and how changing a shape changes its volume. - **Light and painting.** Optics, light and shade, proportion, and practical advice for painters. - **Everything else.** Maps of the Arno, costume designs, portraits, botany, studies of how moonlight works. The notebooks are wonderfully mixed: a page can hold a horse's leg, a sum and a mechanical sketch. ## Mirror writing Most of Leonardo's notes run from right to left, in reversed letters that read normally in a mirror. Why is not certain. The Victoria and Albert Museum, which holds the five small notebooks known as the Codex Forster, notes [two main explanations](https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/leonardo-da-vincis-notebooks): he may have wanted privacy, or, as a left-hander, he may simply have found it easier. The museum also points out that the letter shapes themselves are quite ordinary, and that the script becomes readable once the eye adjusts. ## Where the notebooks are - **Codex Atlanticus**, more than a thousand pages, at the Ambrosiana in Milan. - **Codex Trivulzianus**, at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. - **Codex on the Flight of Birds**, at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin. - **The Paris manuscripts**, more than 2,500 pages, at the Institut de France. - **Codex Arundel**, at the British Library in London. - **Codex Forster**, at the V&A in London. - **Codex Windsor**, in the Royal Collection. - **The Madrid codices**, at the Biblioteca Nacional de España. - **Codex Leicester**, owned by Bill Gates, which travels for exhibitions. ## Did he publish anything? Not as finished books. After his death, his pupil Francesco Melzi compiled an anthology of his writings on painting, known as the Codex Urbinas, and an abridged version was published in 1651 as a treatise on painting. Much of what we read today comes from later scholars sorting and translating the scattered pages by subject. ## Editions for curious readers You do not need to read Leonardo cover to cover, because there is no cover. The best way in is a selected edition arranged by theme, with translations and the drawings reproduced alongside, so you can browse anatomy one evening and flight the next. Facsimiles of single codices are lovely objects but harder going. If you are in Milan, London or Paris, look out for exhibitions: seeing a real page, tiny handwriting and all, is something else. The notebooks are also a great argument for keeping your own. See our page on the [commonplace book](https://zestasy.com/wiki/commonplace-book/), the older tradition of copying out and collecting what you read and think. ## FAQ ### Why did Leonardo write backwards? He wrote in mirror script, right to left. The reasons are uncertain: privacy is one theory, and the comfort of a left-handed writer is the other. The V&A sets out both and leaves the question open. ### Did Leonardo invent the helicopter? His Paris manuscripts include a design for a flying machine that is often called a helicopter, alongside a lot of serious study of how birds fly. Designing a machine on paper is not the same as building one, so it is fairer to say he imagined it brilliantly. ### Can you see the notebooks online? It is worth searching the online collections of the institutions that hold them, such as the British Library, the V&A and the Royal Collection; availability changes, so check each one. ### What language are they in? Italian, in the script of his time and his own hand, running right to left. Unless you are a specialist, a transcription and translation is the way in. ## Sources - [Wikipedia: Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci%27s_notebooks) - [Victoria and Albert Museum: Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks](https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/leonardo-da-vincis-notebooks) ## Related - [What does "Renaissance man" really mean?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/renaissance-man/) - [What is a commonplace book?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/commonplace-book/) - [What is Bruno Munari's Design as Art about?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/munari-design-as-art/) - [What was the Grand Tour?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/the-grand-tour/) - [Should you write in your books?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/writing-in-books/) - [All Books & ideas answers in the Wiki](https://zestasy.com/wiki/#books)