Josephinum

The Josephinum on Vienna's Waehringer Strasse was founded in 1785 by Emperor Joseph II as the Collegium Medico-Chirurgicum Josephinum, an academy to train military surgeons for the Habsburg army. Isidor Canevale's neoclassical building greets visitors with a plain main facade and a quiet courtyard of honor. Its globally unique treasure is the collection of around 1,200 anatomical and obstetric wax models that Joseph II commissioned from the Florentine workshops of Felice Fontana and had transported across the Alps. Some have moving parts, all rest in glass cases of rosewood with Venetian mirror glass. Today the building houses the Josephinum Museum of the Medical University of Vienna, which reopened in 2022 after a multi-year renovation. Its collection is one of the most important medical-historical collections in Europe.