The Meridian Room

From the Gallery of Movable Instruments, one enters the Meridian Room, which was part of the original architectural layout of the Specola and was initially designed to house a Ramsden Transit Instrument, now lost. Around 1858, the room underwent a major transformation. The project, carried out by court architect Nicolò Puglia, involved expanding the space and reinforcing the floor to make it sturdy enough to support the heavy Billiemi stone pillars that would hold the Meridian Circle by Pistor & Martins - a new telescope from Berlin.

Architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile also contributed to the renewed appearance of the room, designing the neo-Gothic wooden decorations that adorn the new Meridian Room. The ceiling features a slit aligned with the local meridian, allowing the telescope to observe stars as they cross the meridian. By recording the precise moment of their transit using clocks and chronographs - still preserved in the room - astronomers could determine their astronomical coordinates.

Following the work carried out by the Salvadori workshop, the two brass circles were replaced with two glass discs bearing the scale engraved on the edge, and the illumination system for the graduation and reticle of the telescope was again modified. Furthermore, the instrument's axis was fixed to new supports placed higher on the same original pillars, for the attachment of cameras and new microscopes for reading the circles. The entire telescope was then enameled with gray paint. During the restoration in 1999-2000, all additions made by the Salvadori workshop were removed; only the tube, the optics, and part of the micrometer remain of the original instrument.

Materials: brass, wood

The tube, the optics, and part of the micrometer only remain of the original instrument.

Length: 188 cm

Objective aperture: 12.9 cm

Manufacturer: Pistor & Martins, Berlin, Germany, 1854