In Florence, you can walk back in time to the beginning of the Renaissance as you stroll past 15th-century palaces and art by Michelangelo,
among others. According to the UN, sixty percent of the world's most important art is located in Italy - and half of this is in Florence.
Indeed, Florence is a place where scholars, locals and tourists come together to study some of the world's finest art.
But Florence's attractions are not limited to the arts.
The Instituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze (Institute and Museum of History of
Science) has an extensive collection of scientific instruments and apparatus.
Blending into Florence's historical atmosphere, the Institute is located inside the Palazzo Catellani - a building that was well established even
in Dante's era, nearly six hundred years ago. The museum sits in the Palazza Castellani - in the middle of historic Florence, on the banks of the
Arno and near the Uffizi. It has about 5,000 original items, which are organized in two categories: the Medici and the Lorraine collections.
Founded in 1927 at the University of Florence, the gruppo per la tutela del patrimonio scientifico nazionale (group for the preservation
of
the national scientific heritage) was formed to draw attention to the lack of interest in the documents and apparatus they believed were important
to man's scientific heritage. The group's first exhibit premiered in 1929. This allowed for the nation's first unofficial accounting of Italy's
historical scientific instruments and experimental apparatus. Soon after in 1930, the Institute was founded. In the time since its founding,
the Institute has become a non-profit public entity.
The Institute has mainly been charged with preserving the instruments of the Medici-Lorraine collections as well as developing research in the
history of science.
In 1775, Pietro Leopoldo, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, founded the Museo di Fiscia e Storia Naturale in which he placed many scientific instruments
from the Medici family collection. Among these were original Galilean telescopes. Eventually, the Institute received these items for its collection.
When you enter the Institute, you'll be enthralled with the Medici exhibit on the first floor. Many of the scientific instruments date back over
400 years.
When you reach the second floor, you'll find one of the famous holdings at the Institute - the Lorraine collection. Whereas the Medici exhibit
features scientific instruments from the likes of Galileo, the Lorraine's Collection is focused largely on what Leopoldo considered the 'future'
of science in 1775 - physics and facilities for building new instruments.
You can link to the Institute's virtual tour of the Medici and Lorraine
exhibits
This article was written by staff writer Karyn Dest. | | |
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