Never has Charles Darwin seemed so significant. His groundbreaking theories may be 150 years old, but the influential “intelligent-design” lobby still considers him a rabble-rousing radical. Darwin: the Evolution Revolution, a multi-layered ROM exhibit which first opened in 2005 at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, documents Darwin’s lifelong struggle against the anti-science forces. It also features a facsimile of the British naturalist’s study in his residence, Down House, reconstructed by curators with Darwinian attention to detail.

1. Specimens, ranging from insects to skulls, are scattered throughout the study. Multiple drawers hold smaller items: pollen masses from an orchid, an especially fascinating beetle, or seeds plucked from the dried mud off a duck’s feet.

2. With the aid of his walking stick, Darwin took daily strolls along the Sand-walk path—part of Down’s expansive grounds, the ecosystem of which informed his seminal 1859 work, On the Origin of Species. He’d knock a stone off a pile with his cane to keep track of how many laps he’d completed.

3. Changes made to Down House on the family’s move to the borough of Bromley from London in 1842 allowed for increased privacy. Ever-worried about reactions to his theory—he told botanist Joseph Hooker, “It is like confessing to a murder”—Darwin installed a mirror outside his study window so he could know when visitors had arrived. Nearby Luxted Road was lowered so that passersby couldn’t see into the house.

4. Darwin was an avid collector of scientific works, which he annotated heavily, at times ripping out sections pertaining to his research or cutting volumes in half for ease of use. His personal tastes, meanwhile, leaned toward Scottish novelist Walter Scott and fellow Brit William Wordsworth.

5. For a post-Origin study, Darwin used chloroform to anaesthetize carnivorous plants. Residue from this and other chemicals reportedly remains in the bottles.

6. Darwin used his microscope—“a splendid plaything,” he called it—to dissect barnacles (in which he was a leading expert) and view pollen grains, among other fixations.

7. The study wouldn’t be complete without a likeness of Emma, his wife, mother of their 10 children, and nurse to him during a long illness that remains undiagnosed. A prodigious pianist, Emma would receive lessons—from Frédéric Chopin no less—in the nearby drawing room.

Darwin: the Evolution Revolution runs March 8 to Aug. 4. $20. Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park, 416-586-8000, www.rom.on.ca.