Built in 1594 inside the Palazzo del Bo, this is the first permanent anatomical theatre in the world — and it survives essentially intact. A steep, six-tiered wooden oval, designed by the anatomist Girolamo Fabrici d'Acquapendente as a teaching space for the medical faculty, narrows to a railing around a flat marble table at the bottom where the corpse was placed. The walls are unornamented; the focus is the body.
The theatre is part of the Palazzo del Bo guided tour and the most memorable single room in it. The dim, almost claustrophobic intimacy of the space — and the fact that William Harvey watched lectures here a couple of decades before working out the circulation of the blood — gives it a real charge for visitors interested in the history of science. Visits by guided tour only; book ahead in summer.