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This essay examines a famous episode of Florentine history: the attempt to deviate the Arno upstream of Pisa in order to deprive the rebel city of the river’s waters (1503–1504). The enterprise, well documented in the accumulated studies on Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli, is analyzed along two avenues: for the first, the copious published documents are reread and contextualized, seeking to separate the certain elements from the numerous hypotheses that have filtered down in the literature and that too often have become real historiographic myths; for the second, new sources are presented that clarify the final phases of the project while also shedding light on the entire affair and the role played by each character: not just Leonardo (whose presence was limited to one initial phase, separate from the building site), Pier Soderini, and Niccolò Machiavelli, but in particular, the Duke Ercole I d’Este and his trusted architect Biagio Rossetti.
