Museo Galileo: Moons Named for a Duke
Why is it significant?
On the corner of the little Piazza dei Giudici stands a solid medieval palace, Palazzo Castellani, with the words Museo Galileo above the door. Behind those walls is one of the great collections of scientific instruments in the world, and almost all of it was gathered by people who ruled Florence.
Key Facts
| Place | Museo Galileo: Moons Named for a Duke |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza dei Giudici 1, 50122 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.76760, 11.25620 |
| Part of Walk | Guilds, Feuds and Bonfires: The Florentine Republic Walk in Florence |
| Generated | Generated |
On the corner of the little Piazza dei Giudici stands a solid medieval palace, Palazzo Castellani, with the words Museo Galileo above the door. Behind those walls is one of the great collections of scientific instruments in the world, and almost all of it was gathered by people who ruled Florence.
Inside are the scientific collections of the Medici and of the Lorraine grand dukes who followed them: globes, astrolabes, armillary spheres, the thermometers of the Accademia del Cimento, one of Europe's first experimental academies, founded under Medici patronage in 1657... and the only two telescopes made by Galileo Galilei that survive.
In January 1610 Galileo pointed a telescope at Jupiter and saw four small points of light circling it. He was a professor in Padua, in the Venetian Republic, and he wanted a job back home in Tuscany. So he called the new moons the Medicean Stars, after the young Grand Duke Cosimo II and his three brothers, and dedicated his book, the Starry Messenger, to Cosimo. It worked. That same year he became Chief Mathematician and Philosopher to the Grand Duke. The museum keeps a cracked lens, said to be the objective of the telescope he used, set in an elaborate frame.
And then there is the finger. In 1737, almost a century after Galileo died under house arrest, his body was moved to a grand tomb in Santa Croce, and admirers took a few relics. One of them was the middle finger of his right hand. It stands upright in a glass egg, pointing at the sky... or, as Florentines like to say, at somebody else.
It is a story about power, too. The Republic had become a court, and genius now needed a prince to pay for it, a prince who could not protect Galileo when Rome tried him in 1633. From here, head north through Via dei Castellani and Via dei Leoni, behind the Palazzo Vecchio, then up Via del Proconsolo, and turn left into the tiny Piazza San Martino.