Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa

Aquarium

The museum has the largest freshwater aquarium in Italy at 60,000 liters. The first sector of the exhibition is entirely dedicated to Lake Tanganyika and hosts various specimens of cichlids belonging to the Tropheus. The second section houses dipnoi, arowana, some freshwater puffers, an axolotl colony, a softshell turtle and a mata mata specimen. The third sector is the largest tank and is dedicated to Koi carp. The fourth and fifth sectors show off world fish biodiversity with Asian giant gourami, the American Oscar fish and the alligator pike.

Hall of Archaeocetes

There is a 50 thousand-year-old fossil skeleton of Hippopotamus antiquus. Also, there is a reconstruction of Indohyus, a terrestrial mammal ancestor of modern cetaceans. The exhibition then continues with the cast of a skeleton and the reconstruction of an Ambulocetus natans, an ancient cetacean that was probably able to both swim and walk.

There is a holotype of Aegyptocetus tarfa found in 2002 by a marble cutter of Pietrasanta in a block of Egyptian limestone. The path then ends with a series of casts of fossils belonging to Cynthiacetus.

History

The museum dates back to the 16th century when the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando I de 'Medici set up a cabinet of curiosities attached to the Giardino dei Semplici.

The direction was entrusted to Luca Ghini, founder and curator of the botanical garden. In 1595, Ferdinando ordered that the various Florentine naturalistic collections was brought into the museum and founded one of the first museums in the world.

The museum was enriched with new collections: in particular, in 1747, Francis I of Lorraine bought an important part of the malacological collection for the museum of the Florentine physician Niccolò Gualtieri, including more than three thousand specimens collected by the Dutch naturalist Georg Eberhard Rumphius.

In the 19th century, the museum had its period of maximum expansion. In 1814, the University of Pisa decided to separate the chairs of scientific teaching, entrusting Gaetano Savi with that of Botany and Giorgio Santi that of zoology, paleontology and geology. This separation of the chairs meant that the museum, which also included the botanical collections under a single direction, was divided into two distinct administrations with greater decision-making autonomy.

Under the direction of Paolo Savi, the collections were enriched, the exhibition spaces were enlarged, and hundreds of writings were published. Savi called upon the Neapolitan Leopoldo Pilla to fill the museum and this brought a large number of Vesuvian rocks and crystals with him.

The museum was shaken by the world wars. During the Second World War, some of the collections were damaged by Allied bombings.