Gustavianum, Uppsala University Museum
University museum in Uppsala's oldest academic building, crowned by a 1660s anatomical theatre.
Gustavianum is the oldest surviving building of Uppsala University, put up in the 1620s beside the cathedral and named after Gustavus Adolphus, who endowed the university. Its most conspicuous feature is the octagonal cupola added by the polymath Olof Rudbeck in the 1660s to house an anatomical theatre modelled on those of Padua and Leiden. Public dissections were held there in winter; it is the second oldest anatomical theatre still standing anywhere.
The museum reopened in 2024 after a long refurbishment that gave the collections new displays across several floors. Galleries cover the Valsgärde boat graves and the beginnings of the Viking Age, ancient Egypt and the classical Mediterranean, the history of the university and the instruments of early modern science. The single most celebrated object is the Augsburg Art Cabinet, an elaborate seventeenth-century cabinet of curiosities presented to Gustavus Adolphus in 1632.
Highlights
- The 1660s anatomical theatre under Rudbeck's octagonal cupola
- The Augsburg Art Cabinet, a cabinet of curiosities of 1632
- Finds from the Valsgärde boat graves near Uppsala
- Egyptian and classical antiquities from the university collections
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