The History of Science museum in Florence is an accurate display based on the collection of scientific instruments.
An antique building renovated several times over the centuries that takes its name from its past owners, the Castellani, is home to the museum since 1930. An important collection of scientific instruments is collected in the building and displayed with great attention and accuracy. The display is concrete evidence of the great interest for science that in Florence from the Thirteenth century onwards went hand in hand with the interest for art. The collection is due, at least its oldest part, to the dedication to natural sciences, physics and mathematics that inspired the Medici Grand Dukes and the Lorraine. Cosimo the First and Francesco de Medici were the first to give great impetus to research in their Grand-Ducal techno-artistic workshops, and in the Seventeenth century Ferdinando II and Cardinal Leopoldo personally promoted and executed physics experiments applying the Galilean method at its best.
Francis and Peter Leopold of Lorraine further increased this type of collection during the Eighteenth century, taking advantage of qualified specialists, like the Abbot Felice Fontana called to manage and enhance the new Museum of Physics and Natural History opened in 1775 in the premises of the Museum of Specola. From the workshop of the museum come in large part the instruments on display today on the second floor of the Museum of the History of Science, which also fed the oldest instruments of the Medici collection originally stored in the Uffizi.
The first floor comprises 11 rooms dedicated to the Medici collection nucleus: quadrants, astrolabes, solar and nocturnal watches, bow compasses, armillary spheres, compasses, real works of art by great Tuscan and European artisans. The original instruments of Galileo have also exposed here; thermometers used at the Accademia del Cimento – 1657 to 1667 – microscopes and meteorological instruments.
The second floor comprises 10 rooms and has a large number of devices of great interest and beauty, primarily from the Lorraine period, concerning mechanics, electricity and pneumatics. Other sections are reserved to mechanical clocks, sextants and octants, pharmacy and chemistry equipment, and weights and measures. In the section devoted to medicine are exposed suggestive obstetric models in wax and clay that present a real catalog of abnormal fetal positions, and the collection of surgical instruments by Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla.
The Institute of History of Science, attached to the museum, has a large antique library and research library that is continuously updated. It also publishes an international journal of history of science called “Nuncius” and conducts permanent researches of history of science and technology, in addition to organizing exhibitions and issuing publications. Finally, it perform an intense academic activity thanks to the planetarium installed at ground floor. At the Institute are also present a photo lab, two restoration laboratories and a modern computer lab.
You can visit the Institute and the museum at the following hours:
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 9,30AM to 5PM, and from 9,30AM to 1PM on Tuesdays and Saturdays. It is closed on Sundays, June 2nd and 24th, August 15th, Novembre 1st, December 8th, 25th and 26th, January 1st and 6th, on Easter and Easter Monday.
Prices: the full price is 4.00€, reduced (from 7 to 18 and above 65 y.o.a. and groups of more than 15 people) 2.00€, free for kids up to 6 y.o.a. The museum also grants access to wheelchairs.
For more info please contact: Piazza dei Giudici 1, Florence. Phone: +39 055-265311 Email: imss@imss.fi.it or the website http://www.imss.fi.it
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