The
Physics Museum Collection largely grew from the
fact that the University gabinetto fisico inherited,
with the unity of Italy in 1860, the scientific
instruments that were in the Royal Palace in Naples.
The story of the Collection is intimately related
to the story of the ruling House, seeming to waver
between memory and forgetfulness, dispersion and
reunion. In 1734 Don Carlos became king of Naples
and Sicily. The son of Phillip V (of Anjou-Bourbon)
and of Elizabeth Farnese, he reigned from 1734
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1759 when he left Naples to take the throne
of Spain as Charles III. When he became King
of Naples, he brought pictures, manuscripts,
documentary archives, parchments, medals and
cameos, inherited from Carlo's mother, Elizabeth
Farnese. Together with these objects d'art,
four crates “of different mathematical
machines" were transported from Parma.
Charles’s intention was to recreate in
Naples, in the Palace of Capodimonte, under
construction since 1738, the museum experience
of the Pilotta in Parma and
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of
the Farnese Palace in Piacenza, where tapestries,
pictures, and furniture were on show together
with spyglasses, clocks and physics and chemistry
machines.
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