Kircher Collection

The Museum Kircherianum was founded in 1651 inside Rome's Collegium Romanum, the Jesuit college near Piazza Venezia, and counted as Europe's most celebrated Baroque cabinet of curiosities. Polymath Athanasius Kircher curated the collection, built around donations from the Museum Settala and the senator Alfonso Donnino. Egyptian mummies sat beside volcanic rocks, automaton clocks beside fossils, optical instruments beside supposed unicorn horns — a single theatre of the world in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. After its 19th-century dissolution, the holdings were dispersed to Rome's national archaeological and prehistoric museums. Today reconstructed sections can be visited, a central chapter in the history of Baroque knowledge.