Italy

In 1894 th

e Institute of General Pathology, directed by Golgi and one of the most famous biomedical research centres in Europe at the time, was set in the historic building Palazzo Botta. The very same rooms today house the the Camillo Golgi Museum in order to bring back, thanks to the heritage of scientific tools and documents left behind, the living memory of that laboratory.

The Museum was founded in October 2012 and comprises six rooms. The first room shows the original office of the Institute’s Directors. In the second one a review of Camillo Golgi’s greatest discoveries is on display: the black reaction, the research studies on malaria and the identification of the Golgi apparatus, which took place right in this building. Beside a rich collection of microtomes and microscopes, a collection of camera lucidas and of the first devices developed for microphotography is also accommodated in the room.

The third room focuses on some of Golgi’s students and the equipment they used to make their cutting-edge discoveries. The old library and the archive are housed in the fourth room and in the fifth one, where the antique furniture allows the visitors to catch also visually the atmosphere of that period. The last room is the Aula Golgi, the splendid hemicycle where Camillo Golgi taught and where seminars and conferences are held still today.