This is the history of the Giovanni Poleni Museum, whose collections began in the eighteenth century with the creation of the Physics Cabinet, enriched over the centuries to become a reference point for the history of physics in Padua.
The Poleni Museum collection originated in 1738, when the Venetian Senate established the chair of experimental philosophy at the University of Padua. For the first time, the lessons included experiments and practical demonstrations on topics such as mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, and heat, effectively introducing the teaching of experimental physics in modern terms in Padua. In 1739, the chair was assigned to Giovanni Poleni, a Venetian marquis and professor of mathematics in Padua.
To support these innovative lessons, Poleni began the creation of a Physics Cabinet, which soon was enriched with about four hundred instruments, becoming a scientific reference center at the European level. Today, about a hundred of these instruments are still preserved. After Poleni, his successors continued to expand the collection, acquiring thousands of new devices as well as some instruments dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the purpose was both to update teaching and research according to scientific developments and to introduce some elements of the history of physics and astronomy.
For almost two centuries, the teaching of experimental physics took place at the Bo Palace, where Poleni had built a “Theater” for his lessons. In 1937, the instrumentation was transferred to the new Physics Institute building on Via Marzolo. During the war years and the subsequent revival of physics in Padua, the collection was partly neglected, until, from the 1980s, Professor Gian Antonio Salandin began to enhance its historical importance, opening the Museum of History of Physics in 1995.
Recently transformed and renovated, the Museum was reopened to the public on September 1, 2021. On this occasion, it was given the name “Giovanni Poleni” to remember the beginnings of Paduan physics.