Situated in the ancient Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, later the seat of the Bargello or Captain of Justice (head of the Police), the museum was instituted in 1859 by the provisional government of Tuscany as the Museum of the History of Tuscany. In 1874 it was transformed into the National Museum of sculpture and the minor arts. The Museum contains important and conspicuous collections of sculpture and objects of the minor arts (ivory carvings, weapons, majolicas, goldwork, medallions and ancient fabrics). In 1889 the collection belonging to Jean Baptiste Carrand was donated to the Bargello Museum. This collection contains some important scientific instruments, among them a great mechanical armillary sphere, a small astrolabe, sundials and mechanical clocks, as well as an extraordinary cartographic instrument called a "cosmometer", dating for the most part from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. In 1899 the Museum was enriched by the Ressmann collection of arms, to which was added, in 1906, the collection of antique fabrics donated by Baron Franchetti.