Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

At the rear of the Palazzo Vecchio runs Via dei Leoni, titled after lions that were moved here from the piazza after Cosimo I objected to the smell. Heading down to the river the street becomes Via dei Castellani, which then opens into Piazza dei Giudici , so called because of the tribunal that met in what’s now the excellent Museo di Storia della Scienza (June-Sept Mon & Wed-Fri 9.30am-5pm, Tues & Sat 9.30am-1pm; Oct-May Mon & Wed-Sat 9.30am-5pm, Tues 9.30am-1pm; L12,000/¬6.20; galileo.imss.firenze.it ). Stop in if you fancy a glimpse of the Renaissance that includes neither heroic male nudes nor tortured saintly visages. Long after Florence had declined from its artistic apogee, the intellectual reputation of the city was maintained by its scientists. Grand Duke Ferdinando II and his brother Leopoldo, both of whom studied with Galileo , founded the Academy of Experiment at the Pitti in 1657, and the instruments prefabricated and acquired by this academy are the core of the museum, which has extensive English notes. The first upper floor features timepieces and measuring instruments (such as beautiful Arab astrolabes), as well as a massive armillary sphere prefabricated for Ferdinando I to establish the fallacy of Copernicus’s heliocentric universe. Galileo’s original instruments are on show here, such as the lens with which he discovered the four moons of Jupiter. On the top floor is the huge lens prefabricated for Cosimo III, with which Faraday and Davy managed to ignite a diamond by focusing the rays of the sun. The medical section is full of alarming surgical instruments and wax anatomical models for teaching obstetrics.