Description
Verona's Museo Civico di Storia Naturale (Civic Museum of Natural History) fills Palazzo Pompei, on the Lungadige Porta Vittoria, a short walk from the center: around three million specimens, among fossils, minerals, animals and plants, only part of them on display in sixteen large halls.
The highlight is the hall of the Bolca fossils: fish and tropical palms that lived 50 million years ago, from the deposits of the Lessini Mountains; the collection counts over 2,500 fossil fish. Just as striking is the mammoth skull found in the 1930s at Quinzano, on the edge of the city.
The museum's roots go back to the 16th century, to the “room of wonders” of the apothecary Francesco Calzolari, who ran the Campana d'Oro pharmacy in Piazza delle Erbe and gathered herbs on Monte Baldo. The prehistory and botany sections are in the former Austrian Arsenal and can be visited only on request.
The highlight is the hall of the Bolca fossils: fish and tropical palms that lived 50 million years ago, from the deposits of the Lessini Mountains; the collection counts over 2,500 fossil fish. Just as striking is the mammoth skull found in the 1930s at Quinzano, on the edge of the city.
The museum's roots go back to the 16th century, to the “room of wonders” of the apothecary Francesco Calzolari, who ran the Campana d'Oro pharmacy in Piazza delle Erbe and gathered herbs on Monte Baldo. The prehistory and botany sections are in the former Austrian Arsenal and can be visited only on request.