Guided tours of the Museo Galileo - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi

To tie in with the Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo exhibition, the Museo Galileo and the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi are holding two special guided tours exploring the links between some of Olafur Eliasson’s artworks and the instruments in the museum’s collection.

Galielo Galileo and Olafur Eliasson

The museum reconstructs the history of scientific initiatives in Florence and Tuscany around the emblematic figure of Galileo – a history that reveals important links with the most advanced research activities being performed at the time on an international scale. For centuries the Houses of Medici and Lorraine offered protection and encouragement to talented scientists involved in some of the most important technical and pratical breakthroughs in modern science.

Of special interest in connection with the themes addressed by Olafur Eliasson are the rooms dedicated to Galileo’s New World (the heart of the museum, with the only two telescopes to have survived of the many that Galileo built; the objective lens from the telescope through which Galileo observed Jupiter’s moons for the first time in January 1610; the geometrical and military compass that he put together during the years that he spent in Padua; and exemplars of other instruments that he devised) and to The Spectacle of Light, a section of the Spectacle of Science section (which showcases numerous devices used in the dark to mesmerise 18th audiences by generating bizarre luminous phenomena: Isaac Newton’s celebrated prisms which broke white light down into the colours of the rainbow, the magic vial that reproduced the phenomenon of the Northern Lights, and tiny electrical sparks which created luminescent “serpents”).

This event is part of the Fuorimostra programme of events and activities designed to tie in with the Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo exhibition.

Activity in Italian only.
There is no charge for the tour but you will need to buy a ticket admitting you to the museum.
Reservations are required.