Journey to the places of science. The Natural History Museum of Venice
The first room of the Natural History Museum of Venice. Photo: Matteo de Fina
The Fontego dei Turchi palace, an early medieval warehouse-house, welcomes visitors starting from the small garden open to everyone, even those looking for just a moment of peace. This is the seat of the Natural History Museum of Venicetoday dedicated to Giancarlo Ligabueand it is one of the stops chosen for the summer trip to the places of science proposed by The live Bo.
“Three halls and about twenty rooms” full of antiquities, bookshop, paintings, silver and natural history objects: the nineteenth-century naturalistic collections were part of the civic museum and the Correr collection, which in turn came from the private collection of the Venetian patrician Teodoro Correr. The building was acquired by the Municipality of Venice in 1859, in poor condition. The restoration works that begin the following year and the building is totally rebuilt. Today the Fontego dei Turchi it shows itself in all its beauty, overlooking the Grand Canal, with a facade decorated with paterae and tiles: in one of these a bird catches a fish and the image has become the logo of the museum itself.
The sale
Today the museum, with large exhibition spaces distributed over two floors, can boast various collections of a paleontological, ethnological, anthropological, geographical nature, coming from research conducted in the local area and from donations from distant lands. The collections form the heart of the rich exhibition set-up: interesting and numerous zoological ones, in particular entomological (the collection of hymenoptera is one of the largest in the world), ornithological and malacological, and botanical ones.
On the ground floor, suspended from the ceiling of the west wing of the portico, two large skeletons welcome the visitor, they are the protagonists of the cetacean gallery: a fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), almost 20 meters long, and a young sperm whale (Physeter catodon).
The first room is dedicated to the expedition conducted between 1972 and 1973, in Gadoufaoua, in the Tenerè desert (Niger), by Giancarlo Ligabue and Philippe Taquet of the Paleontology Institute of the Natural History Museum of Paris. The journey to discover the Venetian museum starts here, from paleontology and come on fossils finding the traces of an ancient time populated by dinosaurs, with a specimen of over seven meters, Ouranosaurus nigeriensisand the skull of the gigantic crocodile Sarcosuchus emperor.
Halfway through we find the rooms that present them collections of explorers: from Giovanni Miani (1810-1872) with a selection of the 1800 finds he collected during the 1859 expedition in search of the sources of the Nile, to Giancarlo Ligabue (1931-2015), passing through the shocking collection of Giuseppe De Reali (1877 -1937), the result of what today clears the definition of reprehensible big game campaigns conducted by the last descendant of a family of Venetian landowners. A collection of 300 artifacts, consisting mainly of hunted and killed animals, which upset, invite reflection on the importance of protecting and respecting the animal world (also implemented thanks to the creation of large parks and reserves) and, still today, get monitored.
The result of many other explorations are the Wunderkammer, or the sixteenth-century chambers of wonders, with precious, rare, bizarre, grotesque objects: the museum offers one perfectly set up. Finally, here is the room, illuminated by large windows, dedicated to the birth of scientific museology with collections of finds – birds, fish, minerals, anatomical preparations, finds preserved in liquid – aimed at the classification, study and interpretation of natural phenomena arranged inside a long cabinet with display cases. Here we are also the skeleton of the bell ringer of San Marco, the protagonist of a Venetian legend that we have told about The live Bo.
The spaces dedicated to life strategy offer an exploration to discover the biodiversity and complexity of living forms, with a focus on movement – from animals corridors and jumpers, diggers and climbers, swimmers and floats, flyers and planers, to those who have chosen to remain still -, nutrition and cycling energy.
The living sea
The temporary exhibition is set up between the cetacean gallery and the other spaces on the ground floor The living sea (until September 11), edited by Marevivo onlusMarevivo Veneto and Fon – Focused on nature, created with the aim of making people known the wonders of the sea, its fragility and the creatures that inhabit it. Signed by the environmental photographer Hussain Aga Khan, in collaboration with the director, instructor and underwater videographer Simone Piccoli, the exhibition offers large-format photographs and videography resulting from the joint work of the two authors in the underwater world of Egypt, Tonga and Mexico. Not just beauty, the exhibition focuses on Responses to marine vegetation – microplastic pollution, shark-finning – to sensitize the visitor and make him more aware, also through a series of dissemination meetings.