Museo del Cinquecento

In the room dedicated to apothecaries in the 1500s, some interactive ‘drawers’ explain the medicinal, cosmetic and culinary uses of spices and animal-derived products exercised by 16^th-century ‘pharmacists’. Opening the drawers, visitors are catapulted into a world that hovers between cooking, science and magic. Here are a few examples of such cures: snails slowly consumed in the heat of the fire yield an oil useful for lengthening and strengthening hair; snake skin cooked in wine is dripped into the ears to combat pain; coral is crushed with porphyry, useful against epilepsy.

Dated 1693, this painting is a wonderful perspective view of Bergamo as it appeared before the Venetian walls were built, by the Bergamasque painter Alvise Cima. Cima’s view transports us to a very detailed Medieval Bergamo, portrayed as if the viewer were hovering above the city. It lets the eye wander among the city’s churchyards, convents, military buildings and private homes. The harmony of the image of the Medieval city is broken up by a very visible black line, which represents the outline of the Venetian walls, built between 1561 and 1588.

An audio-visual installation in the form of a ‘globe’ reflects the change between Medieval Mappae Mundi and new, ‘modern’ geographical maps: from the globe of the Camaldolese monk named Fra Mauro, which demonstrates the persistence of Medieval legends, monsters and mirabilia along the edges of the oecumene, up to the incredible world map drawn in 1508 by the Florentine painter and cartographer Francesco Rosselli, the first example of an oval world map complete with a grid of meridians and parallels.