The project Galileo’s Legacy will be presented at the Italy Pavillion during Expo 2025 Osaka, bringing to life the spirit of Galileo Galilei through immersive virtual reality experiences, hands-on educational workshops, and international dialogues.
On September 10, 2025, Galileo’s Legacy will debut at the Italy Pavillion during Expo 2025 Osaka, showcasing an innovative fusion of science, history, and digital storytelling. The centerpiece is a 360-degree virtual reality video, Galileo VR. The Life, the Discoveries, the Trial, produced in a collaboration led by INAF, Museo Galileo, and VIS.
The event will also feature a hands-on educational workshop “Beyond Galileo: tracking the sunspots“, where Japanese high school students will retrace Galileo’s solar observations using modern instruments to deepen experiential learning.
Marcos Valdes, CEO and Scientific Director of VIS, emphasizes the project’s mission: «VIS finds in Expo Osaka 2025 the ideal space to strengthen its mission: making science engaging, stimulating critical thinking and, as our tagline says, “Making Science Beautiful”. Backed by a fruitful collaboration with INAF, Galileo VR — created with Museo Galileo — offers an innovative way to rediscover, through virtual reality, the figure of the great scientist, a symbol of the quest for knowledge and the willingness to share results. On an educational level, VR enables experiential learning, involving emotions and senses, and transfers concepts clearly and memorably. Artistically, it allows immersion in narrative, visual and sound worlds, making the viewer the protagonist. Galileo VR unites knowledge and art through science, images, music, and storytelling, striking a balance between historical-scientific rigor and imagination to bring the public closer to the content through experience and emotions».
Roberto Ferrari, Executive Director of Museo Galileo, highlighted the cultural importance of the project: «Studying the history of scientific knowledge is an essential step to understand the present and orient the future. Galileo Galilei, father of modern science, with his method based on observation and experimental verification, inaugurated a new season of critical thinking, laying the foundation for scientific freedom and independence. Museo Galileo preserves and disseminates this extraordinary legacy, demonstrating how the challenges faced by the great scientist and his insights opened the way to a new way of conceiving knowledge: not as an exclusive heritage but as a universal resource. From this perspective, the history of science is not only a chronicle of discoveries but an authentic lesson in epistemology and intellectual courage that continues to inspire dialogue among cultures and promote international cooperation. This is the spirit behind scientific diplomacy: making science a bridge among peoples, a tool of peace, shared progress, and the enhancement of knowledge as a common good of humanity».
The day will conclude with an international roundtable featuring scientists, communicators, and institutional representatives, focusing on how science education and immersive technologies like Galileo VR can foster active citizenship, public participation, and address global challenges collaboratively.
This initiative is promoted by the Scientific Directorate of INAF with the participation of the Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) and the Italian Office of Astronomy for Education (I-OAE) of the International Astronomical Union, and is supported logistically and promotionally by the Italy Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka.
For more details, see the full INAF press release.