Istituted by the ornithologist Father G. B. Fourcault in 1766, the museum was originally founded as the Cabinet of Animals, but other collections were added over time to this core, especially when the naturalist Pellegrino Strobel became its director in the second half of the nineteenth century. The visit route illustrates the characteristics of the natural environment of the Parmesan landscape and other geographical realities, exhibiting zoological collections gathered since the eighteenth century. Of particular interest are the African ethnographic collections.The museum is organized into two locations. In the University Palace, you can admire Fourcault’s historic eighteenth-century collection and the Systematic Collection of Vertebrates by Angelo Andres, director of the Museum from 1899 to 1926. The latter, set up between 1923 and 1925, includes over two thousand specimens. Also on public display are two African ethnographic collections, from Pigorini and Falzoi. Among the zoological collections, the “Vittorio Bottego” nucleus, with about six hundred specimens from Eritrea, including rare corals from the Gulf of Massawa, deserves attention. At the Botanical Garden, several educational rooms mainly exhibit invertebrates: mollusks, cnidarians, echinoderms, arthropods. There are also classrooms for the study of biological evolution and urban fauna. Finally, part of the Del Prato collection, consisting of specimens of Parmesan birdlife, and the ethnographic nucleus, including materials from Zaire, are accessible to the public. Other collections, especially of invertebrates, are available only for study purposes.
Information about the Natural History Museum of Parma
Via Farini, 90,
43121 Parma (Parma)
0521033430
musnat@unipr.it
https://museodistorianaturale.unipr.it
Source: MIBACT
