La Specola: Florence

La Specola, the university-affiliated natural history museum in Florence, is a palace-sized wunderkammer. Room after room of precious stones and minerals, some tucked in glass-fronted drawers, intricate models (a flower garden blooming in wax, fruits and nuts and mushrooms in plaster), case upon case of taxidermied specimens, from polar bears to wrens, butterflies to crinoids, and astounding anatomical galleries of the human body, recreated in wax, in every possible cross-section and isolated element, all housed in a gently decaying mansion with sloping marble steps and intermittent frescoes. Just one of the many unexpected museums in Florence that left us agape.