Prologue: A journey to Rome -- The musician's son -- A gifted young Tuscan -- To Rome and the Jesuits -- A Surveyor of Inferno -- The spheres from the tower -- From Pisa to Padua -- Signs in the sky -- De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium -- Lecturer and designer -- A professor's commitments -- Modern physics is born -- A new star in an unchanging sky?- Drawing close to a court -- The balls fall…