Zoologia La Specola - wax anatomical models

The Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze is a

natural history museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

in 6 major collections, located in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. It is part of the

University of Florence The University of Florence (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'', UniFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled. History The first universi ...

. Museum collections are open mornings except Wednesday, and all day Saturday; an admission fee is charged. The museum was established on February 21, 1775 by Grand Duke

Pietro Leopoldo , house =Habsburg-Lorraine , father =Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor , mother = Maria Theresa of Hungary and Bohemia , religion =Roman Catholicism , succession1 =Grand Duke of Tuscany , reign1 =18 Au ...

as the Imperial Regio Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale. At that time it consisted of several natural history collections housed within the palazzo Torrigiani on Via Romana. Through the past two centuries, it has grown significantly and now forms one of the finest collections in Italy.

Collections

Today's collections are as follows: *

Giardino dei Semplici This list of botanical gardens in Italy is intended to include all significant botanical gardens and arboretums in Italy. * Abruzzo ** Alpine Botanical Garden of Campo Imperatore ( Giardino Botanico Alpino di Campo Imperatore) ** Gi ...

(Via Micheli, 3) - Europe's third oldest

botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

, established in 1545, now containing some 9,000 plant specimens. * Museo di Botanica (Via La Pira, 4) - a large

herbarium A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ...

of approximately 4 million specimens, including the historic collections of

Andrea Cesalpino Andrea Cesalpino ( Latinized as Andreas Cæsalpinus) (6 June 1524 – 23 February 1603) was a Florentine physician, philosopher and botanist. In his works he Taxonomy (biology), classified plants according to their fruits and seeds, rather th ...

(1563), claimed to be the first scientific herbarium,

Philip Barker Webb Philip Barker Webb (10 July 1793 – 31 August 1854) was an English botanist. Life Webb was born to a wealthy, aristocratic family; his father was the lord of the manors of Witley and Milford, Surrey, Milford, in Surrey, England. Webb was e ...

, and

Odoardo Beccari Odoardo Beccari (16 November 1843 – 25 October 1920) was an Italian botanist famous for his discoveries in Indonesia, particularly New Guinea, and Australia. He has been called the greatest botanist to ever study Malesia. His author abbreviat ...

. * Museo di Geologia e Paleontologia (Via La Pira, 4) - About 200,000 specimens from the collections of noted geologists and paleontologists (Fucini, Dainelli, Marinelli, De Stefani, Stefanini, D'Ancona, Pecchioli). The vertebrate fossil collection (26,000 specimens) is of particular interest, with mammal fossils from the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

, primarily recovered from

Tuscany Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze''). Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, art ...

and

Valdarno The Valdarno is the valley of the river Arno, although this name does not apply to the entire river basin. Usage of the term generally excludes Casentino and the valleys formed by major tributaries. Some towns in the area: *Rignano sull'Arno *Fi ...

, including ''

Oreopithecus bambolii ''Oreopithecus'' (from the Greek , and , , meaning "hill-ape") is an extinct genus of hominoid primate from the Miocene epoch whose fossils have been found in today's Tuscany and Sardinia in Italy. It existed nine to seven million years ago in ...

'', anthropoid primates, and early

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae an ...

skeletons. The

paleobotany Paleobotany, which is also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (paleogeogr ...

collection includes a further 8,000 items. * Museo di Mineralogia e Litologia (Via La Pira, 4) - About 50,000 specimens in a number of collections. Of particular interest are the earliest items from the Tribuna degli Uffizi (about 500 specimens), and the collection of Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti (about 5,000 items), cataloged in 12 manuscript volumes. * Museo Nazionale di Antropologia ed Etnologia (

Palazzo Nonfinito The Palazzo Nonfinito (Italian language, Italian: lit. ''Unfinished Palace'') is a Mannerism, Mannerist-style palace located on Via del Proconsolo #12, (corner with Via del Corso) in central Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. Begun in 1593 using d ...

. Via del Proconsolo, 12) - About 15,000

ethnological Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...

items and 6,100

anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

items, with a photographic collection containing a further 26,000 prints and 7,000 negatives. The original collection was a cabinet of curiosities containing items such as an ivory horn from the

Kingdom of Kongo The Kingdom of Kongo ( kg, Kongo dya Ntotila or ''Wene wa Kongo;'' pt, Reino do Congo) was a kingdom located in central Africa in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of the ...

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

n insignia of command, and bows and arrows from the

upper Amazon The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile. The headwaters of t ...

. It was notably augmented by items from Captain

James Cook James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...

's voyages in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. * Zoologia "

La Specola The Museum of Zoology and Natural History, best known as La Specola, is an eclectic natural history museum in Florence, central Italy, located next to the Pitti Palace. The name '' Specola'' means observatory, a reference to the astronomical obser ...

" (Via Romana, 17) - A major collection of some 3 million

zoological Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and dis ...

specimens, of which about 5,000 are on public display, with a further 3,000 specimens in the hall of skeletons. The collection of wax

anatomical Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...

models is of particular interest. It was begun in 1771 by Grand Duke

and is said to be the largest such collection in the world; about 1,400 models are currently on public display.

References

* ''Museo di Storia Naturale: 1775-2005'', undated brochure from the museum

External links

*
Museum of Natural History, University of Florence (English)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Museo Di Storia Naturale Di Firenze 1775 establishments in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany Museums in Florence Natural history museums in Italy University of Florence University museums in Italy 1775 establishments in Italy