Research & Knowledge

Opposite the vehicles, you’ll find the Research & Knowledge area: the modern era sparked new ways of exploring the world and the cosmos. Modern research was based on observation and calculation, and a new culture of systematic measuring and surveying of the world began to grow. The objects assembled here bear witness to these developments: globes, clocks, sun dials, compasses, measuring instruments and a telescope.

The largest of the globes on display was made by Vincenzo Coronelli, a Venetian Franciscan, who supplied baroque Europe with globes and maps in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In particular, his huge globes of the earth and the heavens, which look like visually stunning encyclopaedias of the astronomical knowledge of the time, led to his international reputation. Our globe of the heavens was originally located in the Jesuit University of Graz.

Made in 1835, the chronoglobium is an unusual looking object: Atlas of the heavens shoulders the brass and steel globe encased in a glass sphere: a pretty hefty lesson in astronomy, seeing as the object depicts the most important stars, the equator, the tropics, the polar circles as well as the hours of day and night.