Address: Piazza dei Giudici, 1
This museum is found in the old palace whose name comes from
its last owners, the Castellani; it was begun in the twelfth
century although its appearance is of the fourteenth with some
sixteenth century alterations. It was restored in the middle of
the last century. In 1929 it became the Science Museum after
being the headquarters of the Giudici di Ruota and for several
decades the National Library. The Science Museum houses an
important collection of scientific instruments in a carefully
arranged layout, the proof that Florence's interest in science
from the thirteenth century onwards was as great as its interest
in art.
It was the interest of the Medici and Lorraine families in the
natural sciences, physics and mathematics which prompted them to
collect precious and visually beautiful scientific instruments
along with paintings and other objects of art and natural
curiosities; this provided the nucleus for this museum. As is
well-known, Cosimo I and Francesco encouraged the scientific and
artistic researches carried out in the Grand Ducal workshops, but
other members of the Medici family in the seventeenth century
(notably Ferdinando II and Cardinal Leopoldo) protected and
personally followed physics experiments in the full light of
Galileo's method.
Francesco and
Leopoldo of Lorraine also continued this type of collecting in
the eighteenth century, with the aid of qualified specialists. In
particular the abate Felice Fontana (1730-1805) strengthened the
Museum of Physics and Natural Sciences and its adjoining
laboratory. It was from the latter that most of the instruments
in the museum today originated, although the museum was then in
the
Pitti Palace. During the
eighteenth century the instruments formerly in the
Uffizi also went there.
The first floor (11 rooms) is dedicated to the medical nucleus:
quadrants, astrolabus, meridianas, dials, compasses, armillary
spheres, bussolas, real works of art made by the famous Tuscan
and European artists. Galileo's original instruments are also on
show, the thermometres belonging to the Accademia del Cimento
(1657-1667), the microscopes and the meterological instruments.
The second floor (10 stairs) displays a large number of equipment
of great interest and beauty, mostly Lorrainese, belonging to
mechanics, electrostatics, pneumatology. Other sections are set
aside to mechanical clocks, sextants, octants, pharmaceutical and
chemical apparatus, weights and measures. In the section
dedicated to medicine there are displayed suggestaive obstetrical
models in wax and terracotta, which show a real catalogue of
anomolous postions of the fetus in the matrix, as well as the
collection of surgical instruments of Giovanni Alessandro
Brambilla.
The large covered roof-terrace on the third floor houses
temporary exhibitions, congresses and international gatherings.
The Institute has a large antique library for research,
continually updated, and specialized in the history of Science.
It carries out permanent research on the history of Science and
Technology, with particular attention being paid to the
recognition and cataloguing of the primary sources. It organizes
exhibitions and publishes monographical works, catalogues of
instruments, etc. In short it carries out an intense didactic
activity, thanks also to the Planetarium fitted out on the ground
floor. At the Institute and National Museum of History of Science
operate a photographic laboratory and two restoration
laboratories.
