The Virtual Museum of the Salernitan Medical School was born from the transformation and expansion of the Didactic Museum of the Salernitan Medical School, created in 1993 by the Superintendence. In the virtual museum, the themes and protagonists of that glorious chapter, which, in the years immediately following the year 1000, saw Salerno at the center of the scientific renaissance of the West, come to life again in an engaging and interactive narrative. An important hub of cultural and commercial traffic, Salerno, the Lombard capital well rooted in classical culture, reached expressions of freedom and international cultural openness in scientific elaboration.
Here, through the study of authoritative sources of classical medicine and Arab medicine, and through the medical practice taught and performed by monks and laypeople, that scientific knowledge was defined which placed man, with his health, his rules, and his harmony with nature, at the center of philosophy. The virtual theater, through a specifically designed script, emphasizes its centrality, while symbolically representing the meeting of two distant worlds.
A careful research among precious medieval manuscripts, preserved in the most important Italian and European libraries, provided the very rich iconographic collection of the narrative, which unfolds smoothly and accessibly, between spectacular effects and animated miniatures. Over the years, the small museum became a reference point for scholars, tourists, and school audiences, to whom broad documentation and information were offered through films, illuminated panels, photographic reproductions, and reproductions of ancient surgical instruments.
Technological innovation quickly rendered the equipment used inadequate, and it was therefore necessary to design this new setup, which makes use of the most advanced IT technologies and is able to communicate broadly with a generally informed audience.
Information about the Virtual Museum of the Salernitan Medical School
Via dei Mercanti,74
84100 Salerno (Salerno)
089 2573228 – 089 2573245 / 213
Internet: https://www.lascuolamedicasalernitana.beniculturali.it
