Six globes made by the Venetian cosmographer Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718), famous for the great size of his creations, such as the globes nearly four meters in diameter built for Louis XIV, King of France, are present in the Medici collections. The Museo Galileo's globes belong to the series made by Coronelli at the cosmographic Accademia degli Argonauti founded by him in Venice in 1684. These globes are medium- and small-sized (about one meter and about fifty centimetres in diameter). In 1693 Coronelli described his globe-making techniques in the Epitome cosmografica. Hand-written or printed sheets of paper, called gores, were glued onto a large ball made of wood and papier-mâché and finished with plaster. The twenty-six sheets displayed in this room (twenty-four half-gores and two polar caps) were printed in the 20th century from the original copper plates kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. These plates were prepared for the second edition (Paris 1693) of Coronelli's celestial globe.