Museum of Natural History, University of Pavia

History

The museum was founded as part of the renovation projects by the empress Maria Theresa of Austria for the University of Pavia in 1771. It was set up by Lazzaro Spallanzani, a professor of Natural History in the university. The museum received its first collection, minerals from Vienna, which were donated by the empress Maria Theresa. The collections were kept at Collegio Ghislieri until 1775, when they were moved to Palazzo Centrale, where the collections were catalogued according to the Linnaen classification system.

These collections were kept in the Palazzo Centrale of the university for more than a century. A new wing was added in 1778 for comparative anatomy was added to the existing sections of mineralogy and zoology, containing instruments that had belonged to the surgeon Antonio Scarpa. In 1780, the museum had housed over 24,000 specimens which came from all over the world.

From 1852 to 1874, under the direction of Giuseppe Balsamo Crivelli, the museum expanded its collections thanks to donations and purchases of new specimens, including birds, reptiles, insects and large mammals, including a giraffe and a giant anteater. Each part of the museum became an autonomous museum in 1875 — that of Anatomy was moved into Palace Botta in 1903, likewise the one of Zoology was moved in 1935. The mineralogy section was moved to another part of the Palace.

In 1960, all sections were moved again into the Castle Visconteo, in order to create a unique museum which was opened to the public, but the plan was cancelled. During this time, the collections deteriorated due to lack of maintenance. In 1995, work started to regain and restore materials because, over the years, the collections became degraded. Recently, the museum has been in a phase of planning; the definitive seat of the Natural History Museum is planned to be in the scientific pole of the University.

Collections

The museum is divided into three sections — Zoology, Geopaleontology and Comparative Anatomy. The museum hosts multiple collections including:

This section contains the remaining zoological collection curated by Lazzaro Spallanzani. Many of the items from the original collection were damaged due to parasites. The rest of the collection were obtained through donations or personal acquisitions and are still in excellent condition. The collection also includes a "verse guide" from the 1793 opera, L'Invito. Versi sciolti di Dafni orobiano a Lesbia Cidonia, written by Lorenzo Mascheroni, a mathematician and a lecturer in the university.

The Spallanzani collection includes animal specimens preserved in alcohol such as:

Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) acquired by Spallanzani in 1781 during the journey to Marseilles.

Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) from Mantua in 1783.

Short-finned mako shark (Isurus oxyrhynchus) from the Strait of Messina, purchased by the abbot Gaetano Grano in 1790.

Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) donated by Count Giacomo Sannazari in 1782.

Young orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), acquired in 1786.

In particular, the hippopotamus has a particular history: it is a female specimen, purchased by the Gonzaga in the early seventeenth century, who exhibited it in the Ducal palace in Mantua with the mummy of Rinaldo Bonacolsi on horseback. Around 1700, Rinaldo's mummy was thrown into Lake Mantua and, in 1783, the Austrian government decided to have the hippopotamus brought to the Pavia museum.

The vertebrate collection contains over 5,000 animal specimens. The reptile collection includes a python, anaconda and alligator. Many specimens were collected during scientific explorations in the 19th and 20th century. They are preserved in alcohol, and among them, there's a very rare albino specimen of water snake (Natrix tessellata). Other reptile specimens such as lizards (Lacertidae and Agamidae) were collected by a Pavia explorer, Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti. The Agama robecchii specimen was collected by him at Obbia, Somalia in 1890. …