The Science Museum in Florence doesn't fit the mold of a 21st Century science museum, full of buttons to push and things that light up or make sparks or swing or fall in instructive ways. There are instead very few things a visitor would be invited to touch, and many things they'd better not. This is a museum devoted to the history of science, as reflected in its name, the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza. You won’t see anything about relativity or quantum mechanics or computers, but you will see telescopes hand-made by Galileo (apparently there's a preserved finger of Galileo himself somewhere, but we didn't see it) and a variety of beautiful instruments made from brass and polished wood, back when scientists had a sense of style.



There are also some books written by Galileo on display (including one that got him into trouble with the Inquisition in 1632, in which he strongly supported the Copernican theory of the Earth not being the center of the universe, citing his observations of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus; he ended up under house arrest for the rest of his life).


The bulk of the museum's collection comes from two private collections, from the Medici and Lorraine families. The Lorraine collection picks up where the Medici collection leaves off, with more refined instruments and electrical apparatus from the 18th and 19th Centuries.



The museum renamed itself to Museo Galileo in 2010, after an extensive renovation (in progress during our visit) was completed. It was and is located along the river, just upstream from the Uffizi Gallery, in a building called the Palazzo Castellani. After leaving the museum, we walked northward, away from the river, toward our next stop, the Duomo Museum.