Description
The Domus Galilaeana is a cultural foundation in Pisa, on via Santa Maria, devoted to the history of science and to Galileo Galilei. More than a museum, it is a large library with scientists' archives: if you love documents you will enjoy it, if you are after display cases to walk past, less so.
It is not a museum in the strict sense. Its collection includes over 40,000 specialized volumes and important archives of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scientists.
Among the holdings stand out the papers of Antonio Pacinotti, inventor of the dynamo, and the documents of Enrico Fermi and Ettore Majorana, the physicist who mysteriously disappeared in 1938. Since 2013 their collections have been cataloged and put online.
Some instruments tied to the archives are kept too, such as the sources Fermi used for his experiments on induced radioactivity and the photographic equipment of the astronomer Pio Emanuelli.
The building is not Galileo's birthplace, which is instead near the courthouse. It is the former Palazzotto della Specola, between the house of Antonio Pacinotti and that of Carlo Francesco Gabba, which once housed the university library and the astronomical observatory.
The observatory was built in 1734-35 to a design by Giulio Foggini, with a five-story tower. But in Pisa the ground is unforgiving: the tower showed stability problems right away, because the soil was sinking, and in 1826 it was demolished.
The idea of an institute devoted to the Pisan scientist was born in 1938, ahead of the centenary of the first meeting of Italian scientists, held in Pisa in 1839. Giovanni Gentile promoted it, and the body received legal recognition in 1941.
The Domus also saved from destruction the CEP, the Calcolatrice Elettronica Pisana, now in the collections of the Museum of Calculating Instruments. Since 2002 it has been a private-law foundation. It offers educational programs for schools, from Galileo to the physicists of the twentieth century.
It is not a museum in the strict sense. Its collection includes over 40,000 specialized volumes and important archives of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scientists.
Among the holdings stand out the papers of Antonio Pacinotti, inventor of the dynamo, and the documents of Enrico Fermi and Ettore Majorana, the physicist who mysteriously disappeared in 1938. Since 2013 their collections have been cataloged and put online.
Some instruments tied to the archives are kept too, such as the sources Fermi used for his experiments on induced radioactivity and the photographic equipment of the astronomer Pio Emanuelli.
The building is not Galileo's birthplace, which is instead near the courthouse. It is the former Palazzotto della Specola, between the house of Antonio Pacinotti and that of Carlo Francesco Gabba, which once housed the university library and the astronomical observatory.
The observatory was built in 1734-35 to a design by Giulio Foggini, with a five-story tower. But in Pisa the ground is unforgiving: the tower showed stability problems right away, because the soil was sinking, and in 1826 it was demolished.
The idea of an institute devoted to the Pisan scientist was born in 1938, ahead of the centenary of the first meeting of Italian scientists, held in Pisa in 1839. Giovanni Gentile promoted it, and the body received legal recognition in 1941.
The Domus also saved from destruction the CEP, the Calcolatrice Elettronica Pisana, now in the collections of the Museum of Calculating Instruments. Since 2002 it has been a private-law foundation. It offers educational programs for schools, from Galileo to the physicists of the twentieth century.