The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

The 1655 engraving of the Danish physician and antiquarian Ole Worm's collection of various animals, plants, minerals and other objects, the Museum Wormianum, is one of the most famous examples of the Schatz-, Kunst-, Raritäten-, and Wunderkammern from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. After the death of Worm, King Frederik III obtained the collection and integrated it with his own art collection. The original collection no longer exists, but I suppose it is hard not to wonder what it would have been like to visit Worm's museum, and, if my memory serves me right, an attempt was actually made to temporarily reconstruct the Museum for an exhibition at Rundetårn in Copenhagen some 25 years ago.

The only collection of this kind that survives to this day, is the one started by Ferdinand II of Tyrol at Castle Ambras just outside Innsbruck in 1580, and it is fortunately readily accessible to the public. It is, however, not easy for the modern visitor to find out what the unifying principle behind the collection was, as it consists of natural objects, art and handicraft from around the globe, some fantastic, some very exotic, some grotesque, and some more ordinary, like the portraits of the Renaissance authors Petrarca, Dante, and Boccaccio, as well as that of the Wallachian ruler Vlad Tepes.