Entry Hall of Galileo's Villa
Please wipe your feet.
Welcome to Galileo's Villa--An Entry to the Galileo Project
Galileo's Villa is a means of finding one's way through the hypertext web
of the Galileo Project. The Villa has been created with the aim of
encouraging and directing access to topically related links. Many of the
rooms also contain links to Internet resources, which have been gathered
here for your convenience. The Portrait Gallery, which is currently under
construction and is not available for viewing, will contain browsable
thumbnail images of approximately 300 images, all of which may also be
viewed in larger versions with a simple click.
About the Rooms
The rooms in the Villa represent different aspects of Galileo's life and
work. When one clicks on a room, a link to an overview of the contents of
the room comes up on the Mosaic screen. Currently, the overviews are
presented in text and images, rather than more detailed room maps. Links
to text, images, and Internet resources are found in the overviews.
The following list describes the rooms in the Villa:
- Entry Hall
- You are here.
- Family Quarters
- Text about Galileo's family can be found in this room.
- Laboratory
- Information about Galileo's inquiries in mechanics (physics) is available
in this room.
- Portrait Gallery
- Collections of browsable thumbnail images will be available in this room
when construction is finished. These images will be grouped topically;
cardinals and other church officials will be collected in one set of portraits,
astronomers in another.
- Receiving Parlor
- This room contains links to texts about Galileo's career, including
biographies of his patrons and accounts of the universities with which he was
associated.
- Chapel
- In addition to information about the Inquisition, this room includes
links to biographies of important church figures.
- Library
- The bibliography of the Galileo Project is found in the library.
Additionally, links about authors and books which played significant roles
in Galileo's career are also included in this room.
- Instrument Closet
- Text and images about the instruments used by Galileo to perform his
experiments and observations are located in this room.
- Observing Terrace
- Among the many links found in the Observatory are accounts of Galileo's
discoveries of Jupiter's moons, biographies of other contemporary astronomers
and accounts of cosmologies. In this room, there is a link to a collection of
Internet resources for modern astronomy and astrophysics; this collection
includes links to stellar images from space agencies and national
observatories.
About the Villa
Galileo's Villa has been constructed using the NCSA ISMAP protocol. An image
of a 16th century Florentine villa was scanned and edited to create a virtual
space in which various aspects of Galileo's life could be represented.
galileo@rice.edu