Royal Observatory Museum in Madrid

One of the Observatory's locations is in the Villanueva Building, in Retiro Park. This centre has an important collection of antique instruments used for different purposes in astronomy and meteorology, such as a meridian circle, a selection of precision timepieces and a bronze mirror polished by W. Herschel. A Foucault pendulum in the central rotunda illustrates the daily rotation of the earth. The building is crowned by Grubb's large equatorial telescope dating from 1912. Another particular highlight is the library, which conserves one of the most ancient and extensive collections of documents on astronomical subjects.