Galileo Museum

The Collections

The nine rooms on the first floor of the Galileo Museum are dedicated to the Medici Collections, which date from the 15th century all the way through to the 18th century. Particularly of note here are all of the unique scientific artefacts that originally belonged to Galileo himself, including two extant telescopes as well as the framed objective lens from the very telescope that he used to discover the Galilean moons of Jupiter. The collection also contains an impressive number of both celestial and terrestrial globes, with Santucci's Armillary Sphere commanding pride of place.

The Museum

Situated in the Piazza dei Giudici on the bank of the River Arno, the Galileo Museum is Florence’s tribute to science and rational thinking. The building was completed in the 11th century and was originally known as the Castello d’Altafronte. These days, the building is home to one of the largest and most important collection of scientific instruments in the world and is a tribute to the revere for science that was held by the Grand Dukes of Lorraine and Medici. After being known as the Museo di Storia della Scienza, it was extensively renovated over a period of two years and re-opened to the public as the Museo Galileo on June 10, 2010.

A large collection of scientific instruments and works were amassed by the Lorraine Grand Dukes during their reign and later donated to the museum. 1929 was a significant year for the Galileo Museum as it hosted the First Italian Exhibition of the History of Science, which highlighted the magnitude of scientific collections within the cultural heritage of Italy. This lead to the birth of the Institute of the History of Science and attached Museum at the University of Florence in 1930, which was originally housed in Palazzo Castellani and featured a number of both permanent and temporary exhibitions.