Despite its candy-colored paint job, the University of Uppsala's anatomical theater has, to some, been a nightmarish theater of horror for going on four centuries now.
Inside the university's old main building, flanked by exhibitions of viking swords, Egyptian mummies, and dissected frogs, sits the world's second oldest operating theater. Built by amateur architect and professional surgeon Olaus Rudbeck the Elder in the mid-17th century, the Gustavianum Anatomical Theater provides a startling glimpse into the ways our forefathers taught each other about the ins and outs of early medicine. Upstaged only by Italy's Palazzo del Bo, the theater at Gustavianum ranks as the second-oldest of its kind still extant in the world today.
Named for Gustav II Adolf, without whose generous financial contribution the university would not have been constructed, the theater once held breathless medical students and curious members of the paying public. Leaning over the balustrades, the rapt audience would watch dissections of animals and convicts in an attempt to better understand the human body's inner workings.
As anatomical theaters fell out of fashion, Gustavianum's complex was repurposed by the university library in the late 18th century. After a turn in the 19th century as a zoological museum, the Anatomical Theater was restored to its original (retired) state in the 1950s. In 1997, the entire building became a museum, accompanied by a permanent collection pertaining to medical history to supplement the theater; though not for the squeamish, the exhibition contains a unique selection of dissected animals, scientific instruments, and medical devices from the theater's heyday.