Florence's Specola reopens after lengthy redevelopment with new exhibition rooms

After a lengthy redevelopment financed by the University of Florence and the Region of Tuscany, the La Specola Museum of Natural History, part of the Museum System of the Florentine Athenaeum, reopened to the public on Feb. 22 in Florence. Visitors will therefore be able to discover the new routes - the botanical and mineralogy waxes - set up after the intervention and rediscover the historic zoology collection; the other routes, however, from the anatomical waxes to the Salone degli Scheletri, from the Tribuna di Galileo to the Torrino, will be open by appointment starting March 1.

As the first example in Europe of a scientific institution open to all, La Specola presents works that have never been exhibited, recomposing Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo’s Enlightenment idea of presenting nature in its entirety in a path from earth (mineralogy) to the sky (astronomy) via botany, anatomy and zoology. Thirteen new exhibition halls, covering a total of 700 square meters, feature new paths dedicated to the beginnings of ceroplasty, botanical waxes and mineralogy, which flank the collections of zoology and anatomical waxes, the Hall of Skeletons, Galileo’s Tribune and the Astronomical Tower, which housed the observatory to which La Specola owes its name.

The museum also offers a new ticket office and a new bookshop, as well as relying on new facilities (electrical, fireproofing and air conditioning).The redevelopment work covered a total of 2,280 square meters and was carried out with contributions from the Region of Tuscany totaling 3.5 million euros and the University of Florence amounting to about 2.5 million euros.

The Specola enters the 250th anniversary of its founding: it was in fact inaugurated on February 21, 1775 as the “Imperial and Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History.”

After more than a century and a half, the mineralogical collections return to be housed in the Specola Museum; in fact, in 1881 they were moved to the site on Via La Pira: there are numerous specimens from the collections collected by the Medici between the 15th and 18th centuries, including some semi-precious stone objects acquired by Lorenzo the Magnificent and perhaps by his father Piero the Gouty. Other artifacts of extraordinary historical value, such as those referable to the collection that the great scientist and father of modern mineralogy Niels Stensen (Niccolò Stenone) collected in the second half of the seventeenth century on behalf of Grand Duke Cosimo III, are part of the collections.

Divided into six rooms, the new exhibition’s itinerary allows visitors to admire the huge crystals of topaz, aquamarine, tourmaline from Elba and Brazil, and samples of hematite and pyrite from Elba and southern Tuscany. After an initial section devoted to meteorites and the evolution of minerals since the birth of our planet, one enters the room devoted to the properties and classification of minerals. Through a corridor in which scientific instruments are displayed and some of the great protagonists of the history of Florentine mineralogy are recalled, one then enters the room dedicated to Italian mineralogy, where samples of sulfur native to Sicily are displayed up to minerals from the Elban collection. The tour continues in a sort of Wunderkammer that brings together artifacts from the Collection of worked stones from the Medici era. It then returns to the starting room and, through a dedicated tour, some of the endless applications of minerals are illustrated, with a special emphasis on the need for ethically and socially sustainable exploitation.

The new section Art and Science: Educational Models consists of seven thematic rooms, carved out of as many rooms on the second floor of the building, totaling more than 200 square meyters of new exhibition space. The most significant new feature is the Florentine Botanical Wax Collection, consisting of plants, fruits, and plates of plant anatomy, histology, and pathology, which after more than a century is once again open to visitors. The itinerary illustrates the genesis and didactic value of the naturalistic and anatomical models, taking visitors through a chronological and narrative line that starts from the 17th century, with a room dedicated to the works of Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, including Baroque allegorical theaters; it moves on to the production of the Florentine waxworks, founded in 1771, with works such as the well-known Venus Demountable and the trunk of a young man by Luigi Calamai and with the aforementioned collection of wax plants and fruits. The itinerary continues through two rooms devoted to enlarged models, with a rich repertoire of plates of plant anatomy and physiology, the production of which began following advances in optics due to Giovan Battista Amici; paintings of still life by Bartolomeo Bimbi; and finally a room devoted to naturalistic and anatomical models produced in materials other than wax, including two anatomical statues and other demountable models in wood, evidence of a limited production of the Museum’s own Workshop, and an anatomical statue in papier-mâché by L. T. J. Auzoux, as well as achievements in glass, plaster and other materials. The seven rooms are joined by an eighth room that repurposes the historical comparative anatomy waxworks, with the display of works that have not been accessible for several years. This room represents the entrance to the Museum’s historical path dedicated to anatomical waxes and zoology.

In fact, the historical exhibition route starts from here and includes the zoology section (23 rooms displaying zoological specimens from all over the world), the world’s unique collection of internationally renowned wax anatomical models, produced over about a century by theOfficina di Ceroplastica created at the museum in 1771, the Tribuna di Galileo (a rare example of late neoclassical Florentine architecture), the Salone degli Scheletri with some 3,000 osteological specimens, and finally the Torrino, which now houses an exhibit that takes visitors back to the origins of the museum and reproduces the unity of scientific knowledge behind the original idea.

For all info: www.sma.unifi.it

Florence's Specola reopens after lengthy redevelopment with new exhibition rooms

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