Museo naturalistico e archeologico Giuseppe Scarabelli

Imola's oldest museum preserves the atmosphere of a nineteenth-century study collection: some 25,000 geological, naturalistic and protohistoric finds still in their original cabinets, gathered under Giuseppe Scarabelli, the geologist and prehistorian who founded the institution in 1857 and gave it his name and his collections.

Why it matters

The Museo Giuseppe Scarabelli is the oldest nucleus of Imola's museums, heir to a Gabinetto di Storia Naturale founded in 1857 when four citizens gave their collections to the comune so that the material would be preserved and put to public use. Its first director, Giuseppe Scarabelli, was a geologist and prehistoric archaeologist as well as a patriot and politician, and the museum keeps the dual character of his work: the deep time of the Apennine margin and the deep past of human settlement around Imola. The galleries retain the character of a nineteenth-century study collection, bringing together geology, natural sciences and protohistoric archaeology.

What to notice

The objects remain in their original display cases, arranged as a nineteenth-century study collection. The exhibition covers three fields. Geology presents rocks, minerals and fossils that document the marine sands and Apennine foothills around Imola; the natural sciences section assembles zoological, botanical and ethnographic material, the latter including objects from Africa and South America brought back by donors, alongside an Egyptian mummy; the protohistoric archaeology section displays material from Palaeolithic sites and the Bronze and Iron Age settlements of the Imola area. The collection includes fossils and Palaeolithic tools Scarabelli recovered from yellow sands near the Bosco della Frattona from 1840 onward.

Context and history

The institution began in 1857, when Scarabelli and three fellow citizens — Odoardo Pirazzoli, Giuseppe Liverani and Giacomo Tassinari — donated collections to the comune: fossil, rock and mineral specimens from the Italian peninsula alongside prehistoric material from the Imola countryside. Scarabelli, the first director, was joined by a line of local scholars whose geological and naturalistic donations enlarged the museum through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The museum now occupies part of the Museo di San Domenico complex, a Dominican convent founded in the thirteenth century on Via Sacchi, sharing the building with the city's art collections and the Domus del Rasoio. The museum's history reflects its continuing role in geological, natural-science and archaeological study.