Museo Galileo, the former ''Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza'' (Institute and Museum of the History of Science) is located in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, in Piazza dei Giudici, along the River

Arno The Arno is a river in the Tuscany region of Italy. It is the most important river of central Italy after the Tiber. Source and route The river originates on Monte Falterona in the Casentino area of the Apennines, and initially takes a so ...

and close to the

Uffizi Gallery The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian mus ...

. The museum, dedicated to astronomer and scientist

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He w ...

, is housed in

Palazzo Castellani Museo Galileo, the former ''Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza'' (Institute and Museum of the History of Science) is located in Florence, Italy, in Piazza dei Giudici, along the River Arno and close to the Uffizi Gallery. The museum, dedicate ...

, an 11th-century building which was then known as the Castello d’Altafronte. Museo Galileo owns one of the world's major collection of scientific instruments, which bears evidence of the role that the

Medici The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Muge ...

and

Lorraine Lorraine , also , , ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; german: Lothringen ; lb, Loutrengen; nl, Lotharingen is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of G ...

Grand Dukes attached to science and scientists. The Museo di Storia della Scienza has re-opened to the public under the new name ''Museo Galileo'' since June 10, 2010, after a two-year closure due to redesigning and renovation works. It has been inaugurated four hundred years after the publication in March 1610 of Galileo's ''

Sidereus Nuncius ''Sidereus Nuncius'' (usually ''Sidereal Messenger'', also ''Starry Messenger'' or ''Sidereal Message'') is a short astronomical treatise (or ''pamphlet'') published in New Latin by Galileo Galilei on March 13, 1610. It was the first published ...

'' (''The Starry Messenger'').

The museum

The museum features the valuable scientific instruments from the Medici Collections which were first displayed in the Stanzino delle Matematiche (Mathematics Room) in the

. They were later on moved to the

Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale The Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze is a natural history museum in 6 major collections, located in Florence, Italy. It is part of the University of Florence. Museum collections are open mornings except Wednesday, and all day Saturday; an adm ...

(Museum of Physics and Natural History) founded by Grand Duke

Peter Leopold , house =Habsburg-Lorraine , father =Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor , mother = Maria Theresa of Hungary and Bohemia , religion =Roman Catholicism , succession1 =Grand Duke of Tuscany , reign1 =18 Au ...

in 1775. During the reign of the Lorraine Grand Dukes, new instruments were added to the scientific collections. In 1929, the First Italian Exhibition of the History of Science in Florence highlighted the importance of scientific collections within Italy's cultural heritage. As a consequence, in 1930 the

University of Florence The University of Florence ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'', UniFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled. History The first univer ...

gave birth to the Istituto di Storia della Scienza con annesso Museo (Institute of the History of Science and attached Museum). The institute was housed in Palazzo Castellani and was entrusted with the instrument collections of the Medici and Lorraine dynasties. The permanent exhibition is arranged by chronological and thematic paths.

The museum directors

1930-1961 Andrea Corsini 1961-1981 Maria Luisa Righini Bonelli 1982-2021 Paolo Galluzzi since 2021 Roberto Ferrari (Executive Director) from July until December 2021 Marco Ciardi (Scientific Director) since December 2021 Filippo Camerota (Scientific Director)

The Medici Collection

The first floor's nine rooms are devoted to the Medici Collections, dating from the 15th century through the 18th century. The permanent exhibition includes all of Galileo's unique artifacts, among which are his only two extant

telescopes A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to obser ...

and the framed objective lens from the telescope with which he discovered the

Galilean moons The Galilean moons (), or Galilean satellites, are the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They were first seen by Galileo Galilei in December 1609 or January 1610, and recognized by him as satellites of Jup ...

of Jupiter;

thermometers A thermometer is a device that measures temperature or a temperature gradient (the degree of hotness or coldness of an object). A thermometer has two important elements: (1) a temperature sensor (e.g. the bulb of a mercury-in-glass thermomet ...

used by members of the

Accademia del Cimento The Accademia del Cimento (Academy of Experiment), an early scientific society, was founded in Florence in 1657 by students of Galileo, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Vincenzo Viviani and ceased to exist about a decade later. The foundation of Aca ...

; and an extraordinary collection of terrestrial and celestial

globe A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model glo ...

s, including Santucci's Armillary Sphere, a giant

armillary sphere An armillary sphere (variations are known as spherical astrolabe, armilla, or armil) is a model of objects in the sky (on the celestial sphere), consisting of a spherical framework of rings, centered on Earth or the Sun, that represent lines ...

designed and built by Antonio Santucci.

The Lorraine Collection

The nine rooms on the second floor house instruments and experimental apparatus collected by the Lorraine dynasty (18th-19th century), which bear witness of the remarkable contribution of

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

and Italy to the progress of

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...

electromagnetism In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions o ...

and chemistry. The exhibits include obstetrical wax models from

Santa Maria Nuova Hospital Santa Claus, also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, or simply Santa, is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring children gifts during the late evening and overnight ...

, Grand Duke

’s chemistry cabinet and the beautiful machines made in the workshop of the Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale to illustrate the fundamental physical laws.

Gallery

File:Sfera Armillare Santucci.jpg, Santucci

File:MuseoGalileo20120420b.JPG, The middle finger of Galileo's right hand File:MuseoGalileo20120420c.JPG, Chemistry cabinet File:MuseoGalileo20120420d.JPG, Winter plate electrical machine File:Ibrahim 'ibn said as sahlì, globo celeste, valencia, 1085, 08.JPG, Arab

celestial globe Celestial globes show the apparent place, apparent positions of the stars in the sky. They omit the Sun, Moon, and planets because the positions of these bodies vary relative to those of the stars, but the ecliptic, along which the Sun moves, is ...

, possibly the oldest one in the world

Research and documentation

Museo Galileo carries out research and documentation in the

history of science and technology The history of science and technology (HST) is a field of history that examines the understanding of the natural world (science) and the ability to manipulate it (technology) at different points in time. This academic discipline also studies the c ...

, as well as in the field of preservation and improvement of museum collections. The library's book collection and a number of online resources are available to scholars. The museum is partner with important institutions, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Foundation, the

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...

’s institutes and the

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, and co-sponsors several research projects. It also organizes and takes part in many conferences on scientific

museology Museology or museum studies is the study of museums. It explores the history of museums and their role in society, as well as the activities they engage in, including curating, preservation, public programming, and education. Terminology Th ...

and the history of science and technology.

Temporary exhibitions

Museo Galileo has been enhancing and promoting the dissemination of scientific culture for many years. In order to meet this commitment effectively, it promotes exhibitions on the history of science and the relationship between science, technology and art. Among the most important exhibitions in Italy and the world: ''Renaissance Engineers: From Brunelleschi to Leonardo da Vinci''; ''The Mind of Leonardo: The Universal Genius at Work''; ''The Medici and Science''; ''Galileo’s Telescope: The Instrument that Changes the World''; ''Galileo: Images of the Universe from Antiquity to the Telescope''; ''Vinum Nostrum: Art, Science and Myths of Wine in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures''; ''Archimedes: The Art and Science of Invention'', and the most recent (2019-2020) ''Water as Microscope of Nature: Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester'', ''Leonardo and His Books: The Library of the Universal Genius'', ''Leonardo da Vinci and Perpetual Motion'', ''The Art of Building a Masterpiece: Trajan Column''.

Publications

Museo Galileo publishes historical scientific works and two journals, which are '' Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science'', and '' Galilaeana'', devoted to research about the figure, work and scientific findings of

. The Nuncius Library series publishes the results of original research in the history of science and technology as well as editions of sources, while the Galilaeana Library series publishes critical essays, document collections and text editions related to Galileo and to the cultural scenario of the early modern period. To be mentioned also the Archive of Italian Scientists’ Correspondence and the Italian Science Library series. In addition, the museum publishes catalogues relevant to its collections and the temporary exhibitions it promotes.

The library

The library—which has been a part of the institute since its foundation—was completely remodelled in 2002, when it was moved to the third floor of Palazzo Castellani. The new architectural set-up was awarded the “Bibliocom Biblioteche in vetrina” prize. The library houses about 150,000 works concerning the history of science. The antique book collection consists of nearly 5,000 works. It includes the Medici-Lorraine Collection, made of scientific books mostly about physics and mathematics, gathered by Tuscan dynasties over five centuries. The library is also home to several 18th- to 20th-century archival collections and a photo archive related to the history of the museum's collections, ancient instruments and places of scientific interest. The contemporary collection includes books in Italian and the major European languages and has an annual growth of about 1,800 new acquisitions. All of the library's material can be searched on the online catalogue. Among the library's activities are the compiling of bibliographies –notably the International Galilaean Bibliography– and the cataloguing of documents relevant to the history of science, even not in the library's possession. In 2004, a

Digital Library A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital ...

was created to preserve and publish digital collections of historical scientific interest.Stefano Casati, ''The Digital library'', in ''Annali del Laboratorio museotecnico'', vol. 5, ''Displaying scientific instruments: from the Medici wardrobe to the Museo Galileo'', 2012, pp. 341-347.

The Multimedia Lab

Aware of the growing importance of

information and communication technologies Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications ( telephone lines and wireless signals) and comput ...

, Museo Galileo started its own Multimedia Lab in 1991. The Lab produces offline and online interactive applications related to the dissemination and documentation of both permanent collections and temporary exhibitions. It also creates digital archives for historical scientific research.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * *

External links

Museo Galileo

{{DEFAULTSORT:Museo Galileo 1930 establishments in Italy Museums established in 1930 Museums in Florence History of science museums Research institutes in Italy