The End of Galileo

As promised - this post is about Florence.

Galileo

The city houses the Villa Galileo, where the scientist was imprisoned and spent the last years of his life. I walked the 45 minutes from the river [from the Ponte Vecchio ('old bridge') that has a statue of Cellini] to the villa.

The road is not flat, to say the least. There are inclines of about 20-25 degrees right at the beginning for a small stretch and also for a long while towards the end. The climb was a toil, but I thought I could do at least that much for Galileo, considering what he had done for physics (!).

There isn't always a pavement, especially along the sharp slope near the house, where big cars pass by, squashing you flat against the wall. But the neighborhood is quite swanky (and probably was, in Galileo's day as well), so maybe not the worst place to be house-prisoner (great view of the hills around Florence!). And his scientific associates, like Toricelli, could visit him.

These days there is a bust of the man displayed in an inset on the wall facing the street, on the second floor. I'm not sure if there is a museum inside, but the house closes at 6pm, and I was late. There is an astrophysical organization of some sort down the road.

I also did not make it to the Museo Galilei in Florence that houses the right hand middle finger of Galileo, although the museum is close to the Uffizi (see below). This part (among others) was separated from his body when it was exhumed in 1737 when his grave was moved. Both the index and middle fingers and the thumb were taken off as relics by the anatomist Antonio Cochhi, with the justification that Galileo wrote great things with these fingers. For those who might encounter it, the thumb is apparently kept in a glass egg.

Others

Two other highlights of my visit to Florence both involved physics indirectly.

First, I went and saw the famous dome of Brunelleschi on the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (a cathedral is a church which is the seat of a bishop). I had seen the climb to the top of the dome on YouTube and thought it was too claustrophobic for me.

So I restricted myself to a ground level view, and even that was very impressive. The dome (there are two actually, the outer dome provides protection and the inner one provides support - the same design is used by the United States Capitol) is clearly an amazing exercise in statics, especially at the time it was built (early 15th century).

I should note Ghiberti's incredible bronze doors (completed in 1452 and called The Gates of Paradise by Michelangelo) - a copy hangs off the baptistery of the cathedral and the originals are in the museum next door. I must have spent 45 minutes staring at the amazing and realistic details - how did someone do this with metal?!

Second, I went to the Galleria Uffizi, which has many outstanding paintings. The most impressive of these I found to be the two Botticelli's: the Birth of Venus and Spring. A painter that knows that much about colors and lines may be called a physicist -:).

Afterword

I gave my talk at LENS (Laboratorio Europeo Spettroscopie Non Lineari) and also visited a number of research groups. Very impressive to see the number of groups working on atomic physics (about 15). Also, these labs are typically helmed by 1-3 students each, which is very impressive (in most universities producing world class work the number is a bit higher). Galileo would have been proud.