Museo della Farmacia (Pharmaziemuseum Brixen)

Upstairs in the historic Peer pharmacy, Brixen preserves its pharmaceutical past: a museum opened in 2002 inside the historic Peer pharmacy, where tablet presses, pill racks and suppository moulds share rooms with a crocodile, an armadillo and, famously, a piece of Egyptian mummy.

Why it matters

Most museum objects were made to be looked at; the Pharmacy Museum's were made to be used, and that is its charm. The devices, remedies, vessels and packaging on display come from the daily practice of a Bressanone apothecary family and trace four centuries of pharmaceutical history. The museum preserves a working pharmacy's material culture and the curiosity cabinet that once hung over the salesroom ceiling.

What to notice

The instruments show craft before industry: tablet presses, the wooden pill racks known as Pillenrechen for drying rows of rolled pills, and suppository moulds, all used in everyday pharmacy. The historic pharmacy’s ceiling decorations reflected the Wunderkammer tradition, and the museum displays such objects as a crocodile, an armadillo head, a moose hoof and a piece of Egyptian mummy, once used to create a sense of wonder. A herbarium of 1653 belongs to the collections, and the museum's library and city-history sections extend the story from remedies to the pharmacists who made and sold them.

Context and history

The museum occupies the upper floor of the building that houses the historic Peer pharmacy and presents four centuries of pharmaceutical history through the instruments and objects of a Bressanone apothecary family. The historic pharmacy setting connects the collection to the trade’s daily practice. The displays connect three registers, the materia medica of the pre-modern pharmacopoeia, the workshop technology of medicine-making, and the commercial stagecraft by which an apothecary signalled competence and wonder to customers crossing the threshold.