Museum Hall of Ancient Inventions

Marble arches and painted frescoes line a museum gallery devoted to ancient machines, its columns carved with acanthus leaves beneath tall windows. A bronze armillary sphere stands at the center on a carved base, near a wooden catapult and a water screw lifting a stream of blue water down a tiered channel. Diagrams of pulleys, wheels and levers cover the far wall in framed parchment sheets, above cases holding swords, astrolabes and pottery. A large wooden water wheel and a hand loom stand along the right side, next to a red velvet-lined case of surgical tools. Marble statues of a soldier and a robed woman flank a pulley device on the left, near a small mechanical lizard on the tiled floor by a hand-cranked mill wheel. Every exhibit occupies its own marked spot on the tiled floor, so a visitor can move machine by machine down the long hall.