Museo Galileo

This guide to the Museo Galileo in Florence begins in 1737, when Galileo Galilei's body was moved to a proper grave in Santa Croce, nearly a century after his death under house arrest for insisting the earth moves around the sun. As mourners opened the coffin, three men -- an anatomist, an antiquarian and a marquis -- quietly pocketed relics: a tooth, a vertebra, and three fingers from his hand. The vertebra went to Padua, while the tooth and two fingers passed through one family's private collection for generations. Look for the single upright finger in its glass case as you listen.