Palazzo Falson is an exquisite historic house museum with medieval architecture and an extraordinary collection in the heart of Mdina. The palazzo belonged to Olof Frederick Gollcher, a descendent of a Swedish-Maltese family who made a fortune in Malta in shipping. Olof was an artist, a philanthropist and art lover who collected objets d’art, mostly from travels throughout his life. Olof’s house in Mdina is filled with antique furniture, silver pieces, oriental carpets, paintings, ship models, armoury, rare books, watches, jewellery and many other valuable artefacts.
An exceptional artefact that stands out from the rest of the collections is an 18th century decimal dial watch made by a distinguished watchmaker, Robert Robin (1741-1799) in Paris in about 1797. Robin was an engineer with a creative mind and a lot of ambition. He belonged to a small circle of great clockmakers and by the end of the 18th century he greatly improved instruments for measuring time. He enjoyed the patronage of King Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette, at the time producing 12 hour watches and clocks and even inventing highly complex astronomical clocks. Robin proudly signed some of his watches as ‘Robin au Louvre’ or ‘Robin aux Galeries du Louvre’.