Set on a hill with sea view, the Museum of Balì is located in the town of Saltara at only 15 km to the city of Fano, Le Marche region. It is dedicated to interactive scienceand allows its visitors to discover with fun all natural phenomena that surround us in everyday life. Here the watchword is: NOT touching is forbidden!
The Museum
The Museum of Balì is named after the beautiful villa where it is hosted, which was built around the XVI century and turned into an astronomical observatory by the bishop Vincenzo Negusanti. After an extensive renovation, it was opened again as a museum in 2004. Inside you'll find a permanent exhibition with around 35 workstations to take a close look at the different natural phenomena; there are rooms of perception with optical and sensory illusions, rooms dedicated to physics with exhibits on light, waves, on mechanics and electromagnetism and also a maths room, presenting exhibits on the theorems of Pythagoras and Euclid, on statistics, on the Gaussian distribution and chaos. On the first floor of the villa there's also a planetary with 46 seats, that allows to observe an artificial sky under a dome of 8 meters... a guided tour among the stars, constellations and planets! The park of the villa houses the astronomical observatory where you'll be able to observe the main celestial objects through sophisticated types of telescope (including a variant with a diameter of 40 meters and a focal length of 4 meters). Through a digital projection system it is possible to see the same show on a screen inside the museum. A real treat: in May 2013 it was introduced a radio telescope - one of the few examples in Italy and the only one currently used for educational and informative purposes - to observe the sky even outside of the optical band. Thanks to this equipment and a very qualified team, the Museum of Balì collaborates with schools of any type and degree and it offers the possibility to organise various activities upon reservation.
Info & tips
The museum is seasonal, therefore, timetable and openings vary with the season.
The visit takes place autonomously, so that everyone can directly experience the various phenomena and scientific experiments. Don't worry, every workstation has a a bilingual caption (Italian - English) that will help you understanding the path, which will last about 2 hours, even if that is strictly subjective! I recommend the planetary that can be booked at the time you buy your tickets and the observatory, open from sunset till closing time. During summer, you can opt to stop in Fano, a lovely beach resort and end your day with a night visit to the museum, enjoying the astronomical section from sundown till 11 pm. The villa has a wide garden where you can relax and enjoy the panorama; not too far there's a food cart perfect to have something to eat and drink!
