Globe Museum, Museum specializing in globes and astronomical instruments in Vienna, Austria.
The Globe Museum (Globenmuseum) occupies the Palais Mollard-Clary in Vienna's Herrengasse and belongs to the Austrian National Library. It holds more than 600 terrestrial and celestial globes, about 200 of them on permanent display, most made before 1850. The collection also includes armillary spheres, planetary globes, orreries, tellurions and lunariums.
The museum opened in 1956 in the Augustinian tract of the Hofburg on Josefsplatz with 63 exhibits, combining the imperial globe collection with those of cartographer Robert Haardt and the International Coronelli Society. It moved to the Palais Mollard in the Herrengasse at the end of 2005. The globe collection itself began in the 19th century; Eugen Oberhummer inventoried eight globes and two armillary spheres in 1921.
The museum displays globes that cartographers and astronomers created over centuries to understand the world. You can see how ideas about our planet and the sky changed over time through these objects.
The museum is located in a palace in Vienna's inner city and is easy to reach by public transport. Plan two to three hours for a comfortable visit, especially if you want to explore the different exhibition areas.
The oldest object in the collection is the terrestrial globe by Gemma Frisius, dated to around 1536, not exactly 1536. It is one of roughly 600 globes held by the museum, most of which were made before 1850.
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