In 2017, we worked together with the company OpenCare, which specialises in moving historical artefacts, on a complex and delicate operation: transporting and setting up the large 19th-century Merz-Repsold telescope, which measures 7m in height and 5m in length, at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. The use of professional construction equipment was essential to place it there.
Previously kept at the Brera Observatory, it was with this telescope that astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli observed details of the surface of Mars in 1886 and then drew the first maps of it.
Restored in 2010 but still inaccessible to the public, it is thanks to a consortium of private and public entities – including Sice Previt – that in 2017 the telescope was finally placed in the Science Museum, at the centre of the exhibition hall dedicated to Space.
Corriere della sera – “Esposto il Merz-Repsold di Schiapparelli” by Giovanni Caprara