The Museum of Fruit

The most delightful museum of all time, next to two of the scariest

The Museum of the Fruit in Turin. Don’t take a bite! (© Harrison Blackman, 2022)

There are museums, and there are museums. Some of them chronicle natural history or showcase the world’s best art acquired from other places (often under shady colonial circumstances), others indulge in nationalist or propagandist narratives.

But my favorite museums are the ones that got it wrong yet still paradoxically exist as a shining example. Cutting edge for their time, these museums missed the mark, and they represent that yes, science changes over time and (hopefully) for the better.

One such museum is Turin’s Museo della Frutta. Yes, that’s Italian for “the Museum of Fruit.” The Museum of Fruit is a showcase to the artworks of Francesco Garnier Valletti, a Renaissance man from the 19th century who crafted thousands of replicas of, well, fruit.

And these aren’t your garden variety plastic apple that you find in the Ikea showroom. These are replicas of a variety of fruit species at every stage in their lifespan. From beautiful fruit at their apex to their rotten, post-ripe afterlife.

These fake “fruits” have been rotting for more than a hundred years! (© Harrison Blackman, 2022)

The question is, well, why? The answer is, funnily enough, intimately tied to the pursuit of knowledge. It’s also the reason behind two of the Fruit Museum’s neighboring museums, which are—by comparison—absolutely terrifying.