April 2019
On my rain-plagued visit to Vienna while working in Iraq, I discovered a branch of the National Library [see: Austrian State Library] known as the "Globe Museum". It was housed in the former Palais Mollard, a minor palace, since 1956. Quite small with only a few rooms open to the public, what was on display was simply amazing. Each globe was like an informative piece of art and a snapshot of the knowledge of its day.
I loved to see the development of globes over time as information and science improved their appearances. I've always had such a healthy respect for early sea explorers who literally were sailing "off the map" charting new lands which would later be added to those globes. Globes were not mass produced and incredibly valuable objects. Each one was hand-crafted and held an absolute abundance of information for the age it served. These objects were not taken along by world explorers in the past but were consulted and copied onto maps (which were just as valuable) that could be taken aboard their vessels. I was in awe of how precious they were in their day and how few people knew about "the world", even if very poorly represented.
The oldest item in the collection is the terrestrial globe of Gemma Frisius (circa 1536). Highlights are the globes of Vincenzo Coronelli (110 cm diameter) and a pair of globes by Gerard Mercator from 1541 and 1551. Further objects in the collection include armillary spheres, planetary globes, astronomical instruments, and instruments in which a globe represents a component, such as planet machines (orreries), tellurions and lunariums.
(Wikipedia)
The little Globe Museum in Vienna might be one of my favorite museums in the world - not for size or beauty (although the palace was gorgeous), but for its quirky yet important collection of knowledge that helped fuel and guide the Western "Age of Discovery". Art met Science in an intersection of new Knowledge. What was not to love?
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