Globe Museum

The Globe Museum in the Palais Mollard is part of the Austrian National Library in Vienna . It is the only public museum for globes in the world .

Palais Mollard, location of the Globe Museum

history

The globe collection of the Vienna Court Library, the forerunner of the National Library, existed as early as the 19th century. In 1956 the museum was opened with 63 exhibits from these holdings and the collection of the private scholar, cartographer and globe specialist Robert Haardt and the International Coronelli Society for Globe Studies . The location was the Augustinertrakt of the Vienna Hofburg on Josefsplatz , as part of the map collection of the National Library. In 1970 and 1986 the museum was given new rooms within the same wing. The Globe Museum has been housed in the Palais Mollard-Clary in Herrengasse since the end of 2005 . The museum has also had the museum seal of approval since 2003 .

collection

Most of the more than 600 terrestrial and celestial globes in the collection, 200 of which are on permanent display, date from before 1850. The oldest object is the terrestrial globe by Gemma R. Frisius (around 1536), a highlight of the collection are the globes by Vincenzo Coronelli (110 cm diameter) and a pair of globes by Gerhard Mercator from 1541 and 1551. Further objects in the collection are armillary spheres , planetary globes and instruments in which globes are part such as planetariums , telluriums and lunariums . The Globe Museum "is the only institution in which globes and instruments related to globes are acquired, researched and presented to the public".

panorama

literature

Jan Mokre, Peter E. Allmayer-Beck (Ed.): The Globe Museum of the Austrian National Library. Bibliophile Edition, Vienna 2005.

Franz Wawrik, Helga Hühnel, Elisabeth Zeilinger: Map collection and globe museum of the Austrian National Library. In: Austrian National Library (Hrsg.): Handbook of historical book collections in Austria , Volume 1, Hildesheim 1994, pp. 137-143 ( online )