‘Leonardo da Vinci noted tsunami of Antalya in his diary’

ANTALYA - Demirören News Agency

Leonardo da Vinci, a world-renowned Italian painter who lived between 1452 and 1519, came to the southern province of Antalya around 1489 and reported an event of a tsunami in his diary, said Nihat Dipova, an academic from Akdeniz University, on Dec. 6.

“Apart from being a painter, da Vinci was also an engineer and a geologist. He was asked to make city walls against the Ottomans for which he visited Antalya,” Dipova said.

According to Dipova, da Vinci witnessed an earthquake and a tsunami during his visit.

“Beneath the sea, off Adalia [today’s Antalya] near Rhodes, there occurred a tremor. On the seafloor, a huge crack formed. For more than three hours, the seawater filled that crack. Then, the sea receded,” wrote da Vinci in his diary, according to the academic.

“What da Vinci has written was a description of a tsunami,” Dipova said, concluding from the painter’s lines.

The academic made a tsunami warning as the country is surrounded by seas on three sides.

“After a massive earthquake, a tsunami might occur in Turkey, too,” Dipova stated.

Speaking about the intensity of a tsunami that might take place, he said: “When we say tsunami, do not directly think about the disaster in Sumatra in 2004. That tsunami occurred as the 1,200-kilometer-long fault slipped. Turkey does not have such long faults.”