Oberstockstall — a Renaissance laboratory excavated

1980

Beneath a parsonage at Oberstockstall in Lower Austria, archaeologists uncover a mid-16th-century alchemical laboratory: some 800 vessels — distillation flasks, crucibles, scorifiers — buried in a filled cellar. It is one of the most complete Renaissance chemical workshops ever found, showing exactly how an adept actually worked. (Engraving: Stradanus, "The Alchemist's Laboratory".)