Museo di Scienze Naturali Enrico Caffi

In Bergamo's Cittadella square, the Enrico Caffi Natural Science Museum holds Triassic fossils from nearby mountains, a woolly mammoth, a fossil deer, a sperm-whale skeleton, and zoological and mineralogical collections.

Why it matters

The mountains that frame Bergamo's horizon — the Orobie Alps — are a geology and biodiversity storehouse, and this civic museum has been collecting and studying them since the early 20th century. Its collections began in 1918 and now span mineralogy, geology, palaeontology, zoology and ethnography, supported by active research on spiders, butterflies, caddisflies and tiger mosquitoes.

What to notice

The Triassic collections of the Bergamasco Alps include Eudimorphodon ranzii, an early flying reptile. The palaeontology holdings also include a fossil deer, Cervus acoronatus, and remains of a woolly mammoth associated with the Ice-Age fauna of the Po plain. A complete sperm-whale skeleton is among the museum's major specimens. Zoological galleries include birds and invertebrates; ethnographic collections include the Perolari and Beltrami holdings, alongside historic scientific instruments. Research collections cover spiders, Lepidoptera, trichoptera and mosquitoes.

Context and history

The museum's naturalistic collections took shape from 1918, growing through donations, expeditions and the work of local naturalists into one of the province's principal scientific heritage bodies, administered today by the Comune di Bergamo. It is named for Enrico Caffi, in keeping with the city's habit of honouring its scholars. Its location in Piazza Cittadella places it beside the Civic Archaeological Museum inside the Visconti fortress complex.