After two long years of restoration, Florence’s institute and museum of
the history of science, renamed the Galileo Museum, has reopened to the public.
The lengthy overhaul, which cost more than eight million euros, coincides with
the 400th anniversary of the publication of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius,
the first treatise on observations made through a telescope.
The new facility,
hailed as one of world’s most high-tech, cutting edge museums, will showcase a
collection of over 1,000 items, ranging from treatises, telescopes, maps,
compasses and a wealth of other instruments. The museum also showcases
Galileo’s thumb, a finger and a tooth, relics that went missing for over a
century and were recently found by a Florentine art collector.
The museum boasts
multimedia tools throughout, a hands-on area where children and adults can
handle copies of some of the items in the collection, a new website and portable
interactive video-guides that link to hypertext pages, 3D animations and
biographies and itineraries tailored to visitors’ specific interests. The
building, located next to the Uffizi Gallery, also gives visitors free Wi-Fi
access around its perimeter so they can check museum information, day and
night.
For more information,
see www.museogalileo.it
Did you know?
When Galileo’s
remains were transferred to Santa Croce 95 years after his death in 1642, one o
y. Documented by one of the attendees, Galileo’s thumb, two fingers, a
vertebrae and a tooth were removed with a pocket knife during the ceremony.
Galileo’s body still lies opposite the tomb of Michelangelo in Santa
Croce.
