Address: Via La Pira, 4
This is the most important museum of its kind in Italy and
includes more than 270,000 examples of animal and vegetable
fossils, fossil imprints and rock specimens.
Medici interests again were responsible for its founding, notably
in the person of the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. It was he who in
the seventeenth century spurred on the collecting of the remains
of vertebrates in the Monte Amiata area and other Tuscan
neighbourhoods of geological interest.
Initially gathered in the
Pitti
Palace then removed to
"La
Specola" with all the scientific instruments, only in
1925 did it find a resting place in its present setting.
Enriched by donations and recent discoveries, the collection was
rearranged in 1963. Some of its contents are of great importance,
such as the Villafranchian mammals from Valdarno, the slate
impression from Monte Pisano and the two skeletons of Elephas
Meridionalis found in the Valdarno, and the famous skeleton of
Oreopithecus Bambolii found near Grosseto and for long
erroneously thought to be the missing link between man and
monkeys.
Apart from the vertebrates including interesting skeletons of
reptiles and birds, the museum has a good 170,000 examples of
invertebrates.
