You know how the Internet used to be a place? Like, you had your big, clunky, taupe desktop. You had a dedicated computer nook (or, if you were lucky, a whole computer room). You’d saddle up in your swivel chair, you’d spend 30 seconds listening to a cacophonous series of beeps and screeches, you’d do your browsing, you’d log off, and life would just…go on. 

But then the smartphone was invented, Instagram was released, and the internet morphed from a place into a weird, 24/7 version of show-and-tell. (It’s about time someone writes a long think piece on this, right? I KID, I KID.)  And I know that this all seems like a uniquely modern ailment – the need to perform for others in hopes of being liked, literally – but it turns out that humans are humans and we’ve been trying to flex for our friends and neighbors for centuries, with or without internet. So today, I have to introduce you to the 16th-century version of Instagram: the Wunderkammer. (Yeah, I did learn something new recently, and yeah, now I’m going to make it everyone’s problem.)

Here’s the gist: a wunderkammer directly translates to “wonder room” or “wonder chamber.” They were the 1500s version of flexing on Instagram – beautifully-decorated rooms filled with physical evidence that the owner was rich, worldly, and cultured. Before search engines, global shipping, and factual accuracy, wunderkammers pre-dated museums and served as places where people went to learn about a rapidly expanding world. (Or if you just wanted to stare at, like, a taxidermied crocodile, you’d do that in here, too.) They were part science lab, part art gallery, part status symbol, and part late-night conversation starter. (I mean, what else are you talking about in the 1500s? Horses? Shipping routes? Might as well look at some coral, or a book, or something novel.) 

Maximalist, Structured Chaos

But there were RULES for designing your wunderkammer, you guys. (Rule one: be a man. Rule two: be a rich merchant, noble, or scholar. Rule three: follow the below rules.) You couldn’t just throw any old thing onto a shelf – there was a method to the madness. Was it scientific? Of course not! (Linnaeus hadn’t yet shown up to ruin everyone’s fun.) But any respectable wunderkammer did follow a series of vibe-based taxonomies:

• Naturalia (Things Created by Nature): This was the core of any good room. We’re talking preserved taxidermy, dried botanical specimens, giant clam shells, pressed leaves, and gemstones. Strangeness reigned supreme here. Who wants to see an everyday fish when they could be looking at a preserved pufferfish? (Not this girl, that’s for sure.)
• Artificialia (Things Created by Humans): This category celebrated craft, ingenuity, and patience. Think micro-carvings in cherry pits, intricate metalwork, carved ivory spheres, delicate Venetian glass…honestly, this taxonomy is pretty normal in comparison to the former and feels like the stuff we’re still tossing in our own libraries and bookshelves today. 
• Exotica (Things Brought from Far Away): In the early era of global trade and colonization, items from Asia, Africa, and the Americas were treated with mystical reverence. Aztec leatherwork, Ming porcelain, Ottoman daggers – these were the cornerstone pieces of a world-class wunderkammer. (Half the time, owners had no idea what their objects were even used for, which somehow added to the mystique and prestige.)
• Scientifica (Things Built to Understand the Universe): This section is the precursor to modern scientific tools. Astrolabes, celestial globes, hourglasses, armillary spheres, and measuring devices. This signaled to your visitors that you didn’t just hoard weird stuff – you were a man of the Enlightenment, actively measuring the heavens. (Can you guys imagine if I, like, posted a picture of all my calculators and compasses on Instagram? Would that be a flex? Would you think I’m smart and worldly?)
• Ethnographica (Things from Foreign People): It focused explicitly on the human artifacts, attire, and ceremonial objects of newly encountered global cultures. Exotica leaned decorative, but Ethnographica was more like a predecessor to cultural anthropology – collectors valued Japanese Samurai armor, Inuit kayaks, ceremonial masks from the Pacific, and the like.
• Antiquitas (Things of Classical Antiquity): This would have been my favorite to collect, I think – this category focuses on material evidence of human history and classic scholarship. Think ancient coins, Etruscan pottery fragments, medieval manuscripts, and ancestral heraldic pieces.
• Scurrilia (Things That are Silly or Weird): People 500 years ago – they’re just like us! Wunderkammers weren’t just for solemn collections – they also housed the strange, monstrous, and deliberately bizarre. Scurrilia, like “dragons” (read: carved, contorted, and dried manta rays), grotesque caricatures, and trick drinking vessels were designed to break up intellectual debate with moments of shock and laughter.
• Theologia (Things that are Sacred): Of course there’s a religious bend! (This is Renaissance Europe, after all.) Placing sacred items in your wunderkammer demonstrated that pursuit of worldly wealth was ultimately subordinate to divine order and your religious devotion. Reliquaries, vials of dried martyr blood, rosaries, crucifixes, and fragments of saintly vestments all did the trick.
• Mirabilia (or Miracula, aka The Unexplained): These items defied both natural law and human explanation. Imagine: “unicorn horns” (read: narwhal tusks), “vegetable lambs” (wooly ferns – they believed these plants grew sheep), magical amulets, and crystal gazing orbs. It sounds like a junk drawer for folklore (let’s be real – you know these rich guys were getting ripped off), but folks in the 1500s believed that these items offered tangible, physical proof of the supernatural operating in our world. 

Here’s the catch: this was NOT a museum. There was no space between objects, no glass cases, no partitions, no guards, no breathing room. On the contrary: the wunderkammer was a room for maximalists. The goal was sensory overload. These rich dudes wanted their guests to stand in the center of the room, spin around, and feel like they were adrift in the marvels of creation. 

The OG Lifestyle Influencers

Alright, alright. It’s easy to write off these rich weirdos and their treasure rooms as an experiment in eccentric hoarding, but the wunderkammer was actually a deeply social spot – think of it as the original interactive home tour. (Do any of you have a parade of homes in your neighborhood? Like that, except no one has any idea what any item in their home really is, or where it’s from, or what it was actually used for. It sounds like it would have been fun!) 

When a host invited you over to view their collection, it was a big deal (and a multi-hour performance). They’d guide you around the room, physically hand you objects, and narrate their (believed) histories. The total lack of organization and maximalism of the space was the point – it allowed conversation to jump from marine biology to classical architecture to alchemy to global trade. (Admittedly, this sounds like a normal conversation to me – do you think some undiagnosed ADHD contributed to the creation of these cabinets of curiosity?) 

A few of these fellows designed rooms so elaborate that they’ve stood the test of time, but the best-known is a guy named Ole Worm (yes, seriously – that was the Latin version of his Danish name, Olaus Wormius). He lived in the late 1500s through the mid-1600s, was a professor at the University of Copenhagen, and his wunderkammer was so extraordinary that artists travelled to make drawings and engravings of his space. Rightfully so, too – his great hall was packed to the brim with taxidermied giant tortoises, polar bear skulls, spears, kayaker paddles, suits of armor, runic inscriptions, folklore manuscripts, shells, bronzes, and hundreds of meticulously labeled drawers. After Worm passed (from the plague – an especially unfortunate fate for a professor of medicine), the King of Denmark absorbed the entire wunderkammer into the Royal Danish Collection. Many of Worm’s original specimens still reside today in the Natural History Museum of Denmark, which is pretty neat. (If you liked this story, you’ll love learning about Emperor Rudolf II’s collection.) 

The Modern Wunderkammer

Eventually, the party had to end – the Age of Enlightenment demanded order. (I mean, folks were launching new democracies and building new nations. It was no longer reasonable to be showing people your fake unicorn horn, you know?) The wunderkammer concept was dismantled, stripped of its maximalist chaos, and split into specialized institutions: naturalia went to natural history museums; artificialia to art galleries; scientifica to science centers…you get the picture.  

But I think the wunderkammer still lives on! (And not just because I’m staring at an office filled with yet-to-be-sorted clutter curiosities.) It exists on the shelves where books share space with your travel souvenirs and vintage finds; it exists in your gallery walls and in your patinated furniture; it exists any time you choose something weird for your home solely because it’ll evoke a reaction. (After years of nothing but white oak and minimalism, I’m happy to welcome some weirdness back into the fold.)

I want to bring this around to where we started: the internet, and Instagram, and performing for others, and all that jazz. In the spirit of the wunderkammer, I hereby issue you a permission slip to stop curating for the algorithm and to start prioritizing your own delight. (You’ll be joining a centuries-old tradition of storied, history-making maximalists.) Buy the little vintage brass insect! Save the cool shell you found on the beach! Hang up your strange thrift store painting that no one else likes. Fill your home with things that spark conversation, provoke questions, and keep the spirit of wonder alive. Then invite me over – I’d love to marvel at your own little creation 🙂