Vienna—It makes sense, if you think about it, a museum devoted to globes sharing space with one about the artificial language Esperanto. Both exist to bind the world together.
The two are in a mansion on Herrengasse, a block north of the Hofburg, the old imperial palace, and a block south of the Café Central, one of Vienna’s most splendid coffee houses. Even with this great location, the museums are seldom busy.
A pity, since both have something to offer. The Globe Museum contains the world’s largest public collection of globes, more than 200, some going back to the 16th century when much of the world was just learning it was round.
There are orbs of the earth, the moon, Mars, Venus and the heavens. There are ones that skip political boundaries and instead show transport routes, tectonic plates or meteorological patterns, and others that are mechanical or inflatable, glow from within or are made of black slate so you can chalk up the continents yourself.
You learn that in other eras constellations had different names.
“During the period of the Enlightenment,” says the audio guide, “constellations were named after mechanical devices or technological discoveries, such as ‘electricity generator’ or ‘balloon,’” The International Union of Astronomy put a stop to that in the 1920s, capping the number of constellations at 88 and standardizing their names.
There are two rare globes by 16th century cartographer Gerardus Mercator, who gave us the Mercator projection still used today to plot spherical surfaces on flat maps. A touchscreen lets you overlay the coastlines as they appear on a modern globe with where Mercator had them in 1541, revealing how inaccurate he could be. On the overlay, the toe of Italy is east of Greece and Iceland is directly north of itself.
The museum’s strongest suit is the beauty of its presentation — it lets you appreciate these globes as works of art. Of special note is a side room reserved for two large globes by Vincenzo Coronelli (1650-1718). On their ornate stands they are as high as an adult. Coronelli made globes for royalty — no European court could be without one. For France’s Louis XIV, he made two, each a vast 3.84 metres in diameter. After Coronelli, says the audio guide, “no globe maker was ever to acquire such fame.”
Downstairs, the Esperanto Museum tells a bit of the history of the world’s most successful artificial language, devised in 1887 by Ludwik Zamenhof of Poland. Leo Tolstoy was an early, avid supporter. On the other hand, Hitler banned it and Stalin had Esperanto speakers taken out and shot.
The museum covers more than Esperanto. A touchscreen has information (and aural examples) on a dozen other made-up tongues, including Klingon. Solresol is the most unusual: its basic elements are the seven notes of a musical scale. Combined, they make sentences that can be said, sung or played. Dore dosolla dolaresi, for example, means “I drink wine.”
Sadly, there’s no gift shop, which would be a natural, you’d think, selling gift globes and Esperanto textbooks.
For more information, visit tonb.ac.at.
