The ferry glides from one bank of northern Italy's Adda River to the other, guided by a cable and pulled by currents, offering harried commuters five minutes of serenity and an alternate route now that a bridge closure has backed up traffic.
Called “Leonardo’s Ferry,’’ the mechanism of the so-called reaction ferry was designed five centuries ago and immortalized by the Renaissance genius himself in a drawing preserved in Windsor Castle's Royal Collection outside of London.
