When we talk about museums in Rome we immediately think of the Vatican Museums or the Capitoline Museums, for example. But the Eternal City is full of museum areas, and some are very, very interesting. As well as details. As a local tour guide I cannot help but describe something curious that deserves special attention. I am in the Santo Spirito in Sassia complex, a historic Roman hospital just a few steps from San Pietro. And it is here, in this historic and centenary building, that the fascinating National Historical Museum of Sanitary Art finds its headquarters. Let's find out together.

Inaugurated in 1933, it stands on the ashes of the original anatomical museum, built in the 1920s, which had a purely educational purpose. Various public and private actors collaborated together to achieve what is the modern museum, which has been housed in the Santo Spirito in Sassia building since 1929. And now let's see some of the gems displayed in the various rooms of the museum, which collects unique pieces belonging to various eras. For example, in the Flajani Room, which still houses one of the most complete anatomical collections in Europe, we find extraordinary bodies and small bodies, even of fetuses, perfectly preserved in which skeletal deformations and more can be seen. Certainly they are quite strong visions, but consider that here, in this room, seventeenth and eighteenth century anatomical models are exhibited, models that present physical alterations of various kinds, from bicephaly to syphilis. It is certainly not a pretty sight, but these models are one of a kind, because it is also through them that modern medicine took its first, very important steps. In the Capparoni Room (historic Italian doctor who went out of his way to open the original anatomical museum), however, we can come into contact with extraordinary votive offerings from the Roman and Etruscan era, as well as containers and bottles containing substances such as scorpion oil or, again, a 19th century electrotherapy machine. In this room there is even a funerary stele of a doctor who lived in the 2nd century AD, and who worked at the court of the emperor Hadrian. A further example of the richness and variety of this very particular collection. In other rooms we find a precious walnut bookcase from three centuries ago containing more than ten thousand prints and medical and health journals , without forgetting, moreover, the faithful reconstruction, with many original instruments, of an eighteenth -century pharmacy.

This brief excursus makes us understand how Rome is full of curiosities and hidden treasures, some even macabre at times, but which give an idea of how rich the Eternal City is. Also think of the instruments or objects with a vaguely macabre flavour, such as a metallic child's hand, the process of which we do not yet know, saws for amputations and similar instruments, present in the National Historical Museum of Sanitary Art. This museum reminds me of another exhibition area relating to medicine, housed in the University City of La Sapienza University of Rome, which you can read about here. In any case, this museum of healthcare art also represents a small gem , something worth knowing and visiting to delve deeper, if you wish, into a fundamental element for the human race: medicine and health. Here, then, is one of Rome 's many surprises!