Sistema Museale di Ateneo, Università di Pavia

Origins of the collection

The instrument collection at the University History Museum's Physics section dates back to the old Physics Cabinet, founded in 1771 following the university reforms ordered by Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria (who reigned in Lombardy and the Veneto) and by her successor, Joseph II. The Cabinet was immediately expanded to include the Physics Theatre (today's Aula Volta) and a meteorological observation tower. In 1778, Como native, Alessandro Volta, was invited to take up the Experimental Physics chair at Pavia. Volta enriched the Cabinet with numerous instruments he had acquired during his travels in Europe and others that he himself had devised and built with the help of expert artisans. In addition to research purposes, many of the instruments were used by Volta in his public demonstrations. These were held twice a week from December to June and attended by students (who attended the professor's daily lessons) and numerous members of the public ("...usually more than 200...", as Volta himself wrote in his Opere, Appendix XXII). The instrument collection, designed for teaching and research, continued with Volta's successors, particularly Giuseppe Belli (Cabinet Director from 1842 to 1860), who increased the collection with instruments he himself had invented, and Giovanni Cantoni (1860 to 1893). An inventory drawn up shortly after Cantoni's death demonstrates that, by the end of the 19th century, the Physics Cabinet boasted over 2,000 articles. Unfortunately, not all of these instruments have survived to the present day: some of the most precious were destroyed in a fire at an exhibition space set up celebrations to mark the centenary of Volta's invention of the battery. The tragedy occurred in 1899 in Como, where the Physics Cabinet had sent most of Volta's instruments. Other instruments were worn out by use and others lost in various transfers over the years, the last of which was due to World War II. Around 1,000 instruments are left today. They represent a rich collection whose uniqueness, compared with other museum collections, lies in its vision of a 19th-century university research and teaching evolution. Today, the Physics section is divided in two rooms: Alessandro Volta's Physics Cabinet, inaugurated on the first day of bicentennial celebrations to mark the invention of the battery (20th March 1999), and the University Physics Cabinet, which gathers together instruments invented or acquired by Volta's successors to the Physics chair.