World's first Anatomical Theatre - Padua

Teatro Anatomico nella Pallazo Bo della Università di Padova

Anatomical Theatre In the Pallazo Bo of Padua University

http://www.unipd.it/en/university/cultural-heritage-0/palazzo-bo-and-anatomical-theatre

            In every one of these places, the experience was visceral, but no more than the anatomical theatre in Padua. You can only see it through a guided tour and there are no pictures allowed in the building, but here are some from the internet.

 The Anatomical Theatre was built in 1594 and is in the Palazzo del Bo as part of the University of Padua. On the tour, we were reminded that windows have been closed for most of the dissections. People would stand in the balconies of the oval shaped room and look down by candle light at the body. The smell would have been oppressive making it an all around intense sensory experience. We were allowed to go only into the bottom of the three tiers, the 'cadaver level' to look up and imagine what the original six tiers would have looked like. Unlike other anatomical theatres, there are no decorations. It is not dome shaped like the ester dome, with no light coming in from above. Indeed, there is nothing glamorous about the dissection hall. That said, it is important that it is the first of its kind. The University of Padua is one of the oldest universities in Europe and was hugely influential in the fields of Medicine and jurisprudence. Vesalius makes reference to the theatre in his Fabrica, which position the site as an important source of inspiration for what was to become early modern anatomy.