Specola Museum

Through its collections of historical instruments, the Specola Museum illustrates the scientific activity carried out in the past centuries at the Observatory and offers a fascinating way to "read" the past, providing new perspectives and careful historical assessments.
The museum preserves a valuable collection of astronomical instruments, clocks, meteorological and topographic devices, as well as physics and geomagnetism apparatus. The collections are on display in the historical premises of the Specola, founded in 1790, and consist of the material heritage accumulated over more than two hundred years of activity.
The masterpiece of the collection is the famous Ramsden Circle, a special and unique telescope, used by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801 to discover the first asteroid, Ceres. The instrument has been restored in the 1990s and repositioned in its original location in the circular room.
The collection is complemented by a gallery of portraits of astronomers, including a few painted by the Giuseppe Velasco in the early 19th century.

The museum was inaugurated in 2001 after a careful restoration and recreates, as much as possible, the original appearance of the oldest core of the Palermo Astronomical Observatory - the Specola Panormitana. It is now part of the museums network of the University of Palermo but is managed in collaboration with INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Palermo, which took care of the conservation of this important heritage, including the old library and archive, since the 1990s.