About Museo Galilei:

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The Museo Galileo collects precious scientific instruments from the Medici and Lorraine collections (16th-19th centuries).

The origin of the Medici collection is due to Cosimo I (1519-1574), who placed it in the Wardrobe of Palazzo Vecchio. In 1600 Ferdinando I (1549-1609) moved the instruments to the Mathematics Room of the Uffizi Gallery.

In 1775 the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine founded the Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History: the entire Medici collection was transferred to its headquarters in Palazzo Torrigiani (where the Museo della Specola iscurrently located). In 1841, at the behest of Leopold II of Lorraine (1797-1870), the Tribuna di Galileo was built in the Royal Physics Museum, where instruments and relics of the great scientist were exhibited, in addition to Renaissance instruments and those of the Cimento Academy.

After the unification of Italy (1861) the collections were dismembered and assigned to various university institutes. In 1929, on the initiative of the newborn Institute of the History of Sciences (1927), the First National Exhibition of the History of Science was organized.
In 1930 the Institute of the History of Science was created with an annexed Museum, located in Palazzo Castellani, to which the University of Florence entrusted the Medici-Lorraine collections.

The exhibition itinerary inside the museum is organized according to chronological and thematic criteria.

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