Medicinsk Museion, Copenhagen

Medicinsk Museion is a museum and research unit devoted to the cultural history of health and disease. The building dates from 1787 and was designed by Peter Meyn. Its principal exhibition room occupies a former surgical auditorium, where students once learned through lectures and dissections.

Study the domed ceiling: Meyn drew on European anatomical theatres, and its form recalls Rome’s Pantheon. The back wall carries an inscription explaining that King Christian VII founded the academy for public health and the honour of the realm. Above the right-hand entrance, a relief shows the king entrusting surgery to a woman representing the academy.

Above the other entrance, Minerva meets Asclepius, whose staff bears a serpent. The collections began with Copenhagen doctors in 1906, and the museum’s inaugural medical-history exhibition opened in 1907.