Museo Geologico e Paleontologico Giuseppe Cortesi

The Museo Geologico e Paleontologico Giuseppe Cortesi explores the geological history of the Po basin through the fossils of the Val d’Arda. It is housed in the Ospitale Santo Spirito, a building that began as a hospice for pilgrims in the late thirteenth century.

Why it matters

The surrounding hills gave their name to the Piacenzian, a division of geological time associated with the Upper Pliocene. Local researcher Giuseppe Cortesi helped identify and classify the fossil-rich deposits in the nineteenth century; the museum now bears his name and interprets the region’s palaeontological record.

What to notice

The collections trace a changing landscape. More than a thousand local fossil molluscs document the marine gulf that once covered the Po basin. Among the larger finds are a baleen-whale skull and a complete dolphin skeleton, recovered from the badlands between Castell’Arquato, Lugagnano, Vernasca and Gropparello. Fossils of rhinoceros, mammoth, bear and bison show the later landscape after the sea retreated. A sixteenth-century frescoed wooden ceiling preserves a trace of the building’s history.

Context and history

The museum opened in 1981, bringing together decades of collection and research. It was first installed in a renovated former municipal slaughterhouse dating from the 1920s, then moved to new exhibition spaces between 1987 and 1989. Its collections connect the distinctive fossils of the Piacenzian deposits with the natural history of the wider Val d’Arda.