The origins of the Museum date back to the establishment of the Natural History teaching at the University of Ferrara in 1862. The collections, inaugurated ten years later in the former convent of the Martyrs on via Roversella, initially included a mineralogical core inherited from the pre-existing Civic Museum, to which numerous zoological, geo-paleontological, mineralogical, and ethnographic materials were added, donated by Ferrarese collectors living abroad, especially in Egypt and Argentina. An important figure for the museum was the sculptor and paleontologist Angelo Conti, who donated a significant collection of Pleistocene invertebrates from Monte Mario. After a long period of abandonment, in 1937 the museum was relocated to its current headquarters, designed by architect Carlo Savonuzzi in a wing of the former hospital of S. Anna. After World War II, on the initiative of the director Mario Canella, the collections were reassembled, expanded, and finally reorganized according to an exhibition path capable of fulfilling precise educational functions. Currently, the museum includes an entomological collection of about one hundred thousand specimens mainly from humid plain environments. The malacological, herpetological, and micromammal collections are growing. Among the most significant pieces of the visit itinerary, recently further updated based on the previous reorganization, are the casts of plesiosaur and tyrannosaur; the monk seal, the polar bear, the giant anteater and, in the rich ornithological collection, a pair of Andean condors and specimens of birds of paradise. The museum also includes an Information and Documentation Point and a Territorial Ecology Station, active since 1987, a specialized Library, and an Observatory on animal communities of wet environments. Since 1997, a dedicated museum section deals with the theme of the environment through artifacts, models, and multimedia reconstructions.
Information about the Civic Museum of Natural History of Ferrara
Via De Pisis, 24,
44121 Ferrara (Ferrara)
0532203381
museo.storianaturale@comune.fe.it
https://www.comune.fe.it/storianaturale/
Source: MIBACT
