Leonardo da Vinci's famed Codex Leicester is set to return to Italy after over 20 years. The codex will be loaned by its owner Bill Gates to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence which will put it on show from October next year until January 2019 in the run-up to 2019's 500th anniversary of the death of the Tuscan genius, Uffizi Director Eike Schmidt said Friday.

The manuscript, which mainly treats scientific subjects, was bought by Gates in 1994 who paid American oil tycoon Armand Hammer some 30.8 billion dollars for it.  It is coming back to Italy on the basis of an agreement, Schmidt said, "on which intense work was done since 2015, when the Codex was shown in Minneapolis".