Museo civico di scienze naturali “Alessio Amighetti”

Behind Lovere's art and lake views runs a quieter institution: a civic museum of natural history founded in 1996 and named for a nineteenth-century priest who put the nature of Lake Iseo into print. Two hundred and twenty-one birds, Mediterranean shells, Alpine butterflies and a microscope room of crystals give the Sebino a scientific memory.

Why it matters

The Museo civico di scienze naturali "Alessio Amighetti" is the destination's register of local nature. Instituted by the municipal administration in 1996 and recognised by Regione Lombardia as a museum collection, it gathers the fauna, flora and minerals of the camuno-sebino territory in one civic collection, run day to day by the Amici del Museo, an association of cultural volunteers.

What to notice

The ornithological room is the core: 221 specimens, mostly from Alto Sebino habitats, arranged from waterbirds — ducks and herons — to raptors, owls, a golden eagle and a pair of capercaillie. In the malacology cases, Mediterranean shells run to some four hundred species of gastropods plus bivalves and rarer classes. Entomology is presented in thematic dioramas and two butterfly collections centred on the Sebino-Camuna area. The herbarium holds 2,345 dried sheets, the oldest gathered in Alta Val Salarno in Val Camonica. Mineralogy counters that with about four hundred specimens from the Sebino, the Orobie and beyond, and some five thousand microcrystals studied under the stereo microscope — the museum's most surprising room. Geology adds fossils, from bivalves to ammonites and fish, and the Curioni collection on deposit from the Accademia Tadini.

Context and history

The museum's patron looks back to the nineteenth century: Alessio Amighetti, a priest and naturalist whose publication Gemma subalpina made the natural beauty of Lake Iseo known to a wider public, gives the institution its name and its programme. The civic museum was instituted in 1996, and Regione Lombardia recognised it as a museum collection — the regional registry records the recognition as a Raccolta Museale and lists the museum's sections across mineralogy, palaeontology, ornithology and mammals, malacology, entomology, mycology and botany. The volunteer staff classify material, collaborate with universities and conduct educational outreach.