Globe Museum

The Globe Museum stands in the elegant Palais Mollard in Vienna’s Herrengasse, part of the Austrian National Library. Housed in a historic palace, it is the world’s only public museum dedicated entirely to globes. The building itself dates from the 17th century and once belonged to Count Mollard, a high-ranking official at the imperial court. Inside, the museum preserves three-dimensional models of Earth and the heavens, as well as related instruments. The collection spans centuries of cartographic art and scientific discovery. The museum’s origins lie in the 19th-century imperial library, where globes were first gathered as gifts and commissions. Emperor Leopold I received two large globes from Vincenzo Coronelli, each decorated with his portrait and dedication. By 1956, the collection had grown to sixty-three items and became a museum in its own right. Today it holds around six hundred globes, with two hundred on permanent display. Many date from before 1850, including the earliest terrestrial globe by Gemma Frisius from about 1536. Visitors find a quiet space filled with gleaming spheres of brass, wood and paper. Coronelli’s giant globes dominate the main hall, their surfaces rich with constellations and place names. Smaller celestial globes show the night sky as seen from different latitudes. Alongside them sit armillary spheres and orreries, mechanical models that trace the movements of planets. The rooms are arranged to let light fall gently on each object, allowing the craftsmanship of past centuries to be admired in calm.