Opened in 2008 inside the Fabbrica del Ghiaccio, at the former slaughterhouse of Piacenza, whose equipment has been left in situ as a significant document of industrial archaeology, the museum’s new itinerary leads the visitor to discover the natural habitats of the Piacenza area through an arrangement organized in three thematic sections: the Plain, the Hill, and the Mountain. In this way, the treatment of the three main naturalistic fields (geology, botany, and zoology) typical of each area, is presented in each room with mutual integrations, aiming to further stimulate the visitor’s curiosity. The main core of the collections consists of petrological, botanical, and local bird collections mostly coming from the Royal Technical Institute of Piacenza and other nineteenth-century natural science cabinets of city educational institutions. Specifically, it includes the collection of displays and scientific instruments from the “Domenico Romagnosi” Institute, where Giacomo Trabucco, Michele del Lupo, and Edoardo Imparati worked, and the herbariums of “Flora Italia Superioris”. The exhibition makes extensive use of reconstructions, dioramas, life-size models that allow the public a direct approach to the multiple naturalistic-environmental aspects of this provincial district and is extensively supplemented by multimedia supports, films, and sound supports which, with their suggestions, project the visitor into the very heart of the various habitats.
As early as the late 19th century, the Commercial Institute “Romagnosi” possessed a substantial and valuable naturalistic collection. Its first description dates back to 1833 by Michele Del Lupo, holder of the chair of sciences and director of the Natural History Cabinet, who annotated and reorganized a collection of rocks, minerals, fossils, animals, and plants. His successor, Giacomo Trabucco, through a series of excursions in the Piacenza valleys, collected the characteristic types of local petrology, assembling almost 400 rock samples coming from the allochthonous and autochthonous terrains of the Apennines and the plain, up to the Po River. Edoardo Imparati, a doctor and ornithologist, curator of the Natural History Cabinet since 1895, mainly expanded the bird collection, which including present specimens and new acquisitions amounted with him to over 300 units. The scholar’s interests were not only aimed at birds but also at the beetles of Piacenza.
In the Botany section of the Museum, the “Flora Italia Superioris” stands out for historical importance, dating around 1820, consisting of a collection of 1,253 “dried specimens” in excellent conservation state. It is accompanied by the “A. Poli” herbarium, containing 1,153 specimens of phanerophytes almost all spontaneous, the “Parmigiani” and “Pavesi” herbaria, and that of the Institute of Botany of the Faculty of Agriculture of the Catholic University of Piacenza. This heritage has mostly found placement in the three museum rooms, before accessing which the visitor is invited to observe a concise representation of city nature that focuses attention on the particular ecology of this environment and on some of the most characteristic species.
The Plain room has been schematically divided into two main sectors – the floodplain belt and the extrafloodplain territories – through a stylized realization of the main embankment of the Po River as a separator between the two areas. The Hill room identifies as the focal element of the exhibition the reconstruction of the three main forest types that characterize its landscape: oak woods, chestnut woods, and pine forests. Animals are exhibited as they could be encountered in a hypothetical natural forest (not always visible), and the visitor is encouraged to observe the environment closely to spot them. The Mountain room is divided into two main sectors: one dedicated to the testimonies of the last Glaciation that also affected the Apennines locally and the other reserved for mountain environmental types such as streams, summit pastures, and beech forests.
Information about Civic Museum of Natural History of Piacenza
Via Scalabrini, 107,
29121 Piacenza (Piacenza)
0523334980
musnat.pc@libero.it
Source: MIBACT
