discoveryon - City officials in the western French town of Nantes on Monday unveiled a manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci that had lain undiscovered in a pile of documents for more than 130 years.
Little more than a fragment of paper with brown scrawls, the piece was proudly presented to the media. Head of Nantes Library Agnes Marcetteau said the item was written back to front in 15th century Italian, and could be best read in a mirror.
It was among some 5,000 documents that were left to the city in 1872 by Pierre-Antoine Labouchere, a rich collector of the time.
"He was most probably writing in Italian from the 15th century and possibly in other languages. So it's now got to be deciphered," Marcetteau told reporters who flocked to see the discovery.
Nantes Mayor Jean-Marc Ayrault saluted the find.
"This rediscovery of a fragment from Leonardo da Vinci is an invitation to do some research," he said.
This is the second time that a rare item has been found in Labouchere's papers. In 2008 researchers chanced on an original score by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Da Vinci, who lived from 1452-1519, is best known in France for the Mona Lisa which is exhibited in the Louvre museum, and was one of the major painters, scientists and thinkers of the Renaissance. In 1486, he designed a prototype for a flying machine with a rotating wing, the ancestor of the helicopter.
Autograph Article 
