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In 2006 at Natural History Museum of Florence took place a charming exhibition describing the transmission of mathematical knowledge from the East to the West and its consequences on the development of European and Florentine culture. Probably it was one of the most wonderful exhibitions in Florence, so that you could travel your mind about all the mathematical influences on Florence art and architecture.

A bridge over the Mediterranean: the Arabic science and the renaissance of Mathematics in the West

This was the title of this special event in Florence organized by The Garden of Archimedes. The show, born in the occasion of the eight hundred anniversary of the appearance of the Liber Abaci (1202) by Fibonacci was first staged in Pisa, from 20 November 2002 to 20 January 2003. Since then, it was shown in various cities both in Italy and abroad.

Leonardo Fibonacci and Florence

At the end of the XII century, Guglielmo of the Bonacci family, notary of the city of Pisa, took with him his son Leonardo to the city of Bugia in the Maghreb, and there sent him to learn arithmetic and the abacus.

For the young Leonardo this meant the discovery of his vocation, to which he dedicated the rest of his life. Having learnt all the mathematics he could during many journeys, in all the Arab Mediterranean world, upon his return to Pisa Leonardo Fibonacci transferred it in a series of works, that for several centuries were without pair in the Christian West, like the Liber Abaci.

The exhibition in Florence was composed by about forty illustrated panels (150x280x5 cm), some shaped panels, about thirty works among which some handwritten reproductions of Fibonacci's works, other texts of medieval mathematics, publications and studies of the nineteenth century about Fibonacci and a plastic model reproducing the dislocation of the abacus' schools in the Florence of the late Middle Ages.