Museo di Ecologia

The Museo di Ecologia occupies the sixteenth-century Loggetta Veneziana above Piazza del Popolo. Founded as a naturalistic institute in 1990 and remodelled as the Museum of Ecology in 2004, it presents wildlife from the Savio valley through dioramas.

Why it matters

The municipality founded the museum to conserve and study the natural materials of Romagna, and its official page describes the result: a collection of the principal animal species, drawn mostly from the Valle del Savio, the river system that shapes Cesena's territory. The regional tourism board includes the museum in its shortlist of the city's institutions. The collection is housed in a Renaissance loggetta overlooking the city's main square.

What to notice

Dioramas reconstruct scenes of natural life along the Savio, Cesena's principal river, from upland woods to the plain. Many specimens come from the valley of the Savio. The Loggetta Veneziana and Torre del Nuti house the displays, while the garden contains botanical species beside the park of the Rocca Malatestiana.

Context and history

The museum began in 1990 as the Istituto per la Conservazione e lo Studio dei Materiali Naturalistici della Romagna, an institute for the conservation and study of Romagna's naturalistic material, and took its present name and form in 2004, according to the municipal page. It stands on the square dedicated to Pietro Zangheri, the Romagna naturalist whose life's work, spanning 1889 to 1983, catalogued the flora and fauna of the region and whose legacy portal lists the Cesena museum among the naturalistic museums born of that tradition. The museum's institutional history continues the naturalistic study and conservation mission established at its founding.