Inside Palazzo Poggi, seat of the rectorate of the University of Bologna, some historical collections of the Institute of Sciences, founded in 1711 by Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, are preserved.
AULA CARDUCCI.
The classroom dedicated to Giosue Carducci opens the museum path of Palazzo Poggi. Here, from 1860 and for forty-three years, the poet held his literature lectures. Inside, the original furnishings are preserved, as well as the bronze bust made in Rome by Bastianelli. Opposite is the Hercules room, with the namesake statue in macigno carved in 1730 by Angelo Piò, formerly located in the building’s courtyard.
HISTORICAL MUSEUM OF THE STUDY AND THE EIGHTH CENTURY.
Established in 1888 at the Archiginnasio on the occasion of the University’s Eighth Century anniversary and transferred in 1948 to Palazzo Poggi, it preserves hundreds of documents from the 11th century, parchments, manuscripts, incunabula, seals, degrees, statutes, donations, autographs, medals, and rectoral insignia. Among the many relics of the museum is the toga of Luigi Galvani. Also exhibited are more than twenty oil portraits of illustrious professors of the University. Along with over four hundred paintings from the collection started in 1754 by the Bolognese cardinal Filippo Maria Monti, they constitute the University’s picture gallery: about six hundred works distributed in the halls of the rectorate and the library. The collection includes works by Donato Creti, Lucia Casalini Torelli, Vandi, Zanotti, Keeble, Crescimbeni, as well as the marble bust of Eustachio Manfredi, sculpted by the famous anatomist Ercole Lelli.
ALDROVANDIAN MUSEUM.
Re-established at the Academy of Sciences in 1907 and since 1913 annexed to the University Library in Palazzo Poggi, the museum preserves a small part of the vast heritage that formed the collection donated to the Senate in 1603 by the famous naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), professor of natural philosophy at the University and founder of the Botanical Garden. The Aldrovandian core, initially housed in the Town Hall together with the naturalistic collection of Ferdinando Cospi, was moved to Palazzo Poggi after the founding of the Institute of Sciences. Depleted by Napoleonic looting, it was redistributed among the various university institutions. In the museum’s 18th-century showcases are exhibited the splendid watercolored plates that accompany the volumes of the “Natural History,” where Aldrovandi described plants and animals with an innovative scientific approach, based on investigation and complemented by illustration. You can observe minerals, fossils, dried or stuffed animals, the famous “Ranina Aldrovandi,” preparations of plant or animal origin. The materials of the collections also include correspondence and works of the naturalist illustrated by a collection of woodcut tablets, a rich herbarium in sixteen volumes, four portraits, one of which by Palagi, and a mosaic portrait of Benedict XIV.
MARSILIAN MUSEUM.
The museum was set up in the rooms of the University Library in 1930 during the celebrations for the bicentenary of the death of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, eminent general and encyclopedic man of culture who founded the Institute of Sciences in Bologna in 1711, inaugurated in Palazzo Poggi in 1714. Marsili marks with his work an innovative moment in the intellectual life of the city and interest in the ancient world. While the archaeological materials from Marsili’s collections are visible at the Civic Archaeological Museum, the Marsilian museum is housed in two rooms of the palace and mostly consists of paper materials. It includes manuscripts and printed works documenting Marsili’s studies from classical antiquity to military art, from geography to ethnology to natural sciences. Also visible are wooden models of fortifications, as well as bronze models of cannons and mortars from the military architecture rooms of the Institute of Sciences. From the same source come maps, manuscripts, and drawings.
MUSEUM OF SHIPS AND ANCIENT MAPS.
The museum was arranged inside Palazzo Poggi, alongside other University rectorate collections. It dates back to the Chamber of Geography and Nautics established in 1724 within the Institute of Sciences. Ten very rare models of various boats, galleons, warships built from the 16th to the 18th centuries are present, including Le Royal Louis, Le Bien Aim (1771), and Le Vainqueur. A section of the museum gathers important copper engraved plates from the 17th century published in Bologna, Paris, Marseille, Amsterdam, and England.
OBSERVATORY AND ASTRONOMY MUSEUM.
It has been set up since 1979 in three rooms of the Observatory building of Palazzo Poggi, for whose construction, in 1702, General Marsili had already turned to Eustachio Manfredi. Designed in 1712 by G. A. Torri and completed in 1725 by C. F. Dotti, the turret, or room of eight large windows, rotated relative to the building with its four faces oriented to the cardinal points and an opening in the vault for zenith observation, was specially built for the use of extrameridian instruments and long telescopes. Besides the valuable Sisson instruments mounted in 1741, numerous nautical, surveying, and geodetic instruments and a Campani rigid-tube telescope, perhaps the only remaining one of its kind, eight meters long, are exhibited. Of notable interest is the brass and marble meridian line by Ercole Lelli (1741) and the string meridian from 1726. Another room preserves some astrolabes and very rare maps printed in Beijing at the start of the 17th century by Jesuit fathers.
OBSTETRIC “G. A. GALLI” MUSEUM.
Established in 1757 on the initiative of Benedict XIV, who had purchased the scientific cabinet of the famous surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli (1708-1782), it is arranged inside Palazzo Poggi. It is a reconstruction of an experimental laboratory, ahead of its time, demonstrating the high level of 18th-century obstetrics through anatomical plates, models in clay, wood and wax, and surgical instruments.
INDIAN MUSEUM.
The museum, alongside other collections of the University Rectorate, hosts the collection of finds and materials gathered in India in 1902 by Francesco Pullè (1850-1934), scientist and patriot. It preserves ‘cloisons’, Chinese porcelains, some weapons and fabrics, small bronze statues, Indian metal vases and plates, as well as several manuscripts.
Information about Palazzo Poggi Museum
Via Zamboni, 33,
40121 Bologna (Bologna)
museo.poggi@alma.unibo.it
Source: MIBACT
