Da Vinci: the amusement park

Almost five centuries ago, an Italian artist and jobbing inventor, somewhat down on his luck, made a 500-mile journey on foot and mule across the Alps to a small town by the river Loire. He was accompanied, apart from the mule, by two faithful followers and three paintings. When he died in France in 1519, the artist left the paintings to one of his Italian followers. All three of the works went on to become famous; one of them went on to become the most celebrated painting of all time. The artist was Leonardo da Vinci.

His death, and burial, in France, and his final job as court artist, philosopher and architect to King François I, meant that Leonardo was, for many years, regarded by the French as an honorary Frenchman. Other than the presence in the Louvre of two of the three paintings that crossed the Alps by mule – including, of course, the Mona Lisa – Leonardo's French connection is now relatively little remembered outside France. Over the next few years, starting this spring, the Château du Clos Lucé in the beautiful town of Amboise on the banks of the Loire, plans to change all that. The building where Leonardo lived for three years before his death has already reinvented itself as a Da Vinci museum and visitor centre. It now has ambitious plans to become the world's first "intellectual and cultural theme park".

The aim is to encourage visitors, from tourists, to school groups, to academics, to unlock the "real" Da Vinci code: the mystery of his dazzling, but exasperating, versatility. Leonardo was not only a painter, perhaps the greatest painter of all time. He was a poet, musician, philosopher, engineer, architect, scientist, mathematician, anatomist, inventor, architect and botanist. He attempted much but completed relatively little. He was a universal genius to some; a brilliant and frustrating dilettante to others. An exhibition on Leonardo's French connections this summer will include a recreation, for the first time in nearly 500 years, of one of Leonardo's most astounding inventions. During his stay at Clos Lucé, he designed a life-size, clockwork robot lion that could walk and move its head and open its chest to reveal bunches of fleur de lys (lilies), the French royal symbol.

"Leonardo was, as well as everything else, a kind of George Lucas of the early 16th century," said François Saint Bris, director of the Château du Clos Lucé and Parc Leonardo da Vinci. "His special effects were legendary, especially the mechanical lion that he created for King François I. We have used contemporary descriptions to commission a celebrated clock-maker in Venice to make the lion come alive again this summer."

A children's workshop for the study of Leonardo's ideas, and to trace their influence on later centuries, will open next month. A derelict industrial building next to the site will become, over the next couple of years, a library of works on Leonardo; a "virtual art gallery" of top-class reproductions of his 17 surviving paintings; and a hi-tech laboratory to investigate his prowess as an inventor, engineer and architect. M. Saint Bris, part of the family that owns the site, said: "Clos Lucé is unique. There is nowhere else in the world where Leonardo's presence during his life is so well documented. We intend to become the foremost site for the study and enjoyment of the achievements of probably the greatest mind, certainly the most versatile mind, that ever lived. Beyond that we hope to become the most important site in Europe for the exploration of all aspects of the Renaissance, from music to science, from Leonardo to Machiavelli to Shakespeare."

According to legend, Leonardo died in his bed in the Château du Clos Lucé in the arms of François I, who adored his pet painter-philosopher and addressed him as "my father". In truth, the French king – a contemporary and great rival of Henry VIII – is known to have been away from Amboise at the time of the artist's death. Donald Sassoon, author of a book on Leonardo's most famous work – Mona Lisa: the history of the world's most famous painting – points out that the artist-inventor-philosopher had fallen out of favour in his native Italy by 1516. King François I had originally tried, and failed, to negotiate the "transfer" to France of other Italian artists, including Michelangelo. Like an ageing footballer going abroad for a final lucrative contract, Leonardo travelled to Amboise because he was the biggest name that the French king could get. He was treated, royally, nonetheless. He was paid 700 gold crowns a year and given the then new Château du Clos Lucé as a place to "think, work and dream". The king would visit him via an underground passage which linked the smaller house to the much larger royal château 500 metres away.

Leonardo's bedroom has already been returned to something like its condition of 1519. The view of the royal château from the window remains scarcely changed from the scene sketched by Leonardo in 1517, a drawing which is now in the Queen's collection at Windsor (like many other drawings undertaken at Clos Lucé).

No official announcement has yet been made but the "Leonardo and France" exhibition at the château from 24 June will include a couple of late original Leonardo sketches, which will return to the place that they were drawn for the first time in five centuries. There is already much else to see. In the basement of the château and scattered through the grounds, visitors can admire recreations of Leonardo's mechanical devices, including a proto-helicopter, aircraft, bicycle, tank, swing bridge, paddle boat, a flying machine and a parachute. And part of the grounds were converted last summer into a "Leonardo garden", containing over 300 species of plants found in his writings and paintings.

More ambitious projects lie ahead. The 18th-century drawing room of the smaller house is to be restored to its early 16th-century condition as workshop and studio. It was here that Leonardo sketched and developed his inventions. It was here, almost certainly, that the Mona Lisa was propped in a corner for three years and occasionally worked upon by Leonardo – never, apparently, to his final satisfaction.

Some art historians now challenge the notion that Leonardo was a transcendental genius and the foremost example of Renaissance Man. They point out that only 17 of his paintings have survived. He liked to experiment with new kinds of paint, so some of his works have literally vanished. But he also worked more slowly and haphazardly than his contemporaries. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in four years – the same time that it took Leonardo to paint the Mona Lisa. The critics also point out that other early 16th-century Italian engineers and scientists sketched flying machines and futuristic war machines.

Leonardo did not strictly speaking "invent" anything, except maybe the parachute. The first known reference to the idea is one of his sketches. M. Saint Bris both accepts, and rejects, the criticism. "It is true that, even in his own time, Leonardo was controversial. People would say: 'You are a great painter. Why do you paint so little and so slowly? Why do you waste your time doing so many other things?' It is also true that few of Leonardo's mechanical ideas led anywhere in his lifetime.

"I believe that this is a misunderstanding of Leonardo's genius. He had a mind that was preoccupied by the infinite. Finishing things was less important to him than starting on new areas of exploration. As a painter, but as also an anatomist, an architect, an engineer, a scientist, he pointed the way forward to the world we know."

The Château du Clos Lucé and Parc Leonardo da Vinci in Amboise are open daily from 9am to 7pm. Admission for adults is €12.50 (£11.40) and for children €7 (under-sixes get in for free).