Museum Leonardo da Vinci Experience

Museum Leonardo da Vinci Experience tickets at Via della Conciliazione 19

The Museum Leonardo da Vinci Experience is where you get to put your hands on Leonardo’s machines, at Via della Conciliazione 19, the avenue that runs up to St Peter’s Square, about 100 metres from the Basilica. Check that address on any ticket you buy. Rome has three museums named after Leonardo, and ticket sites mix them up all the time.

The other two are in the crypt of Santa Maria del Popolo, on Piazza del Popolo, and in the Palazzo della Cancelleria. Each has its own prices and hours, so the figures you see elsewhere often belong to one of them.

At this museum, the ticket costs €12 for adults and €10 for children and students. We don’t sell it, so these are the museum’s own prices, paid at the ticket office or online with the museum.

You don’t need to book, and there’s no time slot to pick. The museum also sells tickets online, and the email it sends you after payment works as your ticket: show it printed or on your phone at the ticket office and you’re in.

Go City, Turbopass and the Roma Pass at the Leonardo da Vinci Experience

The easiest way in with a city pass is the Go City Explorer Pass, which includes general admission as one of your choices. You don’t reserve it before your trip: on your first day in Rome you book it in person at the Touristation Concierge, Piazza d’Ara Coeli 16.

Go City also lists an Interactive Guided Tour of the museum, in a small group, and that one takes a choice of its own. With the Turbopass or the Roma Pass you still pay at the door, just less, so neither one uses up an entry here. The Omnia Card, the Rome Tourist Card and the Vatican City Pass don’t include the museum, and our page on Roma Pass and Rome’s other city passes puts all of them side by side.

Museum Leonardo da Vinci Experience opening hours

The museum opens every day of the week with the same hours, and the last entry is an hour before closing. Some pass and ticket sites give a later opening or an earlier last entry, but these are the hours the museum itself publishes. Go City puts the visit at up to an hour, so arriving by the last entry still gives you time to see it all.

Leonardo’s machines and the copies of his paintings

Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance painter, and this museum is about the other half of him, the inventor and engineer. More than 50 of his inventions have been rebuilt as models and reconstructions, and unlike in a museum of originals, you’re allowed to touch them.

The paintings are a separate room with copies of his best-known works. They’re certified copies, made with the same techniques painters used in the Renaissance, not the originals, which hang in other museums.

The audio guide runs on your phone through the Pop Guide app, for iOS and Android, and it comes with the ticket. Download it before you go, so you’re not waiting on a connection at the first machine.

Getting to the Leonardo da Vinci Experience from St Peter’s or Castel Sant’Angelo

Via della Conciliazione is the straight avenue between Castel Sant’Angelo and St Peter’s Square, so the museum fits easily before or after either of them. From St Peter’s it’s about 100 metres down the avenue, and from the castle you walk the length of it towards the dome.

By bus, Go City points to the Lungotevere Sassia/S.Spirito stop, on the riverside road just below the avenue.