il Museo di Storia della Scienza

After several days of looking at art and architecture in Treviso, Venice and Florence, I enjoyed some cultural heritage of a different sort today - at il Museo di Storia della Scienza. Il Museo di Storia della Scienza is right next to the Uffizi Gallery (which, by the way, has ridiculously cool bathrooms in its basement). While it is currently under construction and the better part of their collection is in storage, the one exhibit they had open during construction was perfect for me - Galileo's telescope!

The museum had a large collection of telescopes on display. I spent a long time staring at the old instruments, trying to decipher how their systems of pulleys, levers and screws once worked together to raise and lower and then precisely adjust the positioning of these 18th and 19th century telescopes. A floor down, however, had the historically cool artifacts - two telescopes constructed by Galileo himself. The exhibit surrounding them discussed the difficulties of low resolution telescopes (by today's standards) that led to headed arguments about the nature of Saturn, the philosophical and theological arguments that hinged on sunspots and the making of historical replicas of Galileo's telescopes. Upstairs, before I left, I stopped again to visit a reliquary that made more sense to me than the dozens I saw in the cathedrals I have visited so far - a glass bell containing the bones from one of Galileo's middle fingers.

By the way, I had an awesome lunch. Right after leaving the museum and still somewhat in awe from my brush with my scientific ancestors, I headed to a little cafe that had been suggested by my travel guide for lunch. As advertised, I had a decadent panini with zucchini, onions, pesto and saffron accompanied by a glass of yummy white wine. Why don't we have food like this back home?

[posted 2 July]