Inaugurated in 2008 inside the Fabbrica del Ghiaccio, at the former Macello of Piacenza, whose equipment has been left in situ as a significant document of industrial archaeology, the museum’s new path guides the visitor to discover the natural habitats of the Piacenza territory through an exhibition organized into 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 proposed in each room with mutual integrations, in order to further stimulate the visitor’s curiosity. The main core of the collections consists of petrological, botanical, and local bird collections largely coming from the Royal Technical Institute of Piacenza and other nineteenth-century natural science cabinets of city schools. In particular, it includes the collection of displays and scientific instruments of the “Domenico Romagnosi” Institute, where Giacomo Trabucco, Michele del Lupo, and Edoardo Imparati worked, and the herbariums of the “Flora Italia Superioris.” The exhibition makes extensive use of reconstructions, dioramas, life-size models that allow the public a direct approach to the multiple natural-environmental aspects of this provincial district and is widely supported by multimedia, videos, and sound supports that with their suggestions project the visitor into the very heart of the different habitats. Already since the end of the nineteenth century, the “Romagnosi” Commercial Institute had a considerable and valuable naturalistic endowment. 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 notes and reorganizes a collection of rocks, minerals, fossils, animals, and plants. His successor, Giacomo Trabucco, thanks to a series of excursions in the Piacentino valleys, collects the characteristic types of local petrology, gathering almost 400 rock samples from allochthonous and autochthonous terrains of the Apennines and the plain, up to the Po river. Edoardo Imparati, doctor and ornithologist, conservator of the Natural History Cabinet since 1895, mainly expands the bird collection, which counts over 300 units including existing specimens and new acquisitions. The scholar’s interests are not only directed to the birdlife but also to the beetles of Piacentino. In the Botany section of the Museum, the “Flora Italia Superioris,” dating around 1820, consisting of a collection of 1,253 dried specimens in excellent condition, stands out historically. Alongside it are the “A. Poli” herbarium, consisting of 1,153 phanerophyte specimens, almost all spontaneous, the “Parmigiani” and “Pavesi” herbariums, and that of the Botany Institute of the Faculty of Agriculture of the Catholic University of Piacenza. This heritage has mostly been placed in the three museum rooms, before entering which the visitor is invited to observe a brief representation of the city’s nature focusing attention on the particular ecology of this environment and some of the most characteristic species. The Plain room has been schematically divided into two main sectors – the floodplain band and the extrafloodplain territories – through a stylized realization of the main embankment of the Po river as a separating element between the two areas. The Hill room identifies as the focal element of the exhibition the reconstruction of the three main forest types characterizing the landscape: oak forest, chestnut grove, and pine forest. The animals are displayed as they might be found in a hypothetical natural forest (not always clearly visible), and the visitor is encouraged to look closely at the environment 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 woods.
Information about the Civic Museum of Natural History of Piacenza
Via Scalabrini, 107,
29121 Piacenza (Piacenza)
0523334980
musnat.pc@libero.it
Source: MIBACT
