INAF Capodimonte Astronomical Observatory
Neoclassical hilltop observatory holding brass nineteenth-century instruments and a working historical refractor.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Capodimonte Astronomical Observatory in Naples opens in 1819, when crates of brass instruments arrived from a Munich workshop and the astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi called the collection the finest he had ever seen. It follows Ernesto Capocci, the assistant who arrived the same year and rose to director, setting himself a years-long project of charting the northern sky star by star. Politics reached the dome in 1848, when Capocci sat in Naples's short-lived revolutionary parliament, and along the way the guide touches on the lunar adventure story he wrote while shut out of the observatory.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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