After poking your eyes with paintings, buildings, squares, bridges, things that are so old that you get a headache counting the years you might be ready for something different! Let’s take a couple of hours of one of your precious mornings and visit the Museo della Scienza, a Museum that might reserve some interesting surprises!

Museo Galileo in Florence

 

The Museo Galileo (formerly the Museum of the History of Science and then Institute and Museum of the History of Science) in Florence is located in Piazza dei Giudici, just behind the square of the Uffizi, the Palazzo Castellani, a strict medieval building with three floors. It preserves one of the most important scientific collections nationally and internationally.

The palace stands on the site of the ancient Castle of Altafronte, dating from the late 11th century, it was the fortress that protected the Arno river port and part of the circle of the ancient walls of Florence.

Museo Galileo in Florence

The museum was inaugurated in 1930 and collects valuable scientific instruments in part from the collections of dei Medici in fact Lorenzo the Magnificent and Cosimo the Elder had a great love for the artistic patronage.

Main objects to see includes the famous telescope of Galileo and also from him the museum also preserves the thermos-cope , the geometric military compass  , the inclined plane and a primitive “microscope”, all items used by the inventor in his many experiments .

One of the larger rooms contains a collection of antique globe and celestial spheres , with a great armillary sphere in carved and gilded wood, used for complex astronomical calculations , made ??by Antonio Santucci between 1588 and 1593 .

The museum is also rich with many other instruments from various countries and various periods, including a series of scientific items of the grand-ducal court , like the machines that create optical illusions , games of lenses and also a unique machine that revealed the purity of diamonds, but destroying them because acting on carbon , which are compounds , causing an irreparable combustion.

Enjoy!