Museo di Storia Naturale Faraggiana Ferrandi

The Faraggiana Ferrandi Natural History Museum in Novara preserves a zoological collection assembled by the Faraggiana Ferrandi family and donated to the city. Its displays use animals and specimens to present the world's zoogeographic regions.

Why it matters

The museum preserves a family scientific project as a coherent collection. Catherine Faraggiana Ferrandi and her son Alessandro developed a private menagerie and museum at Meina on Lake Maggiore, incorporating specimens from their travels and from explorer Ugo Ferrandi. The donation transformed the collection into a civic resource for natural-history education.

What to notice

The collection includes mounted mammals and birds arranged by geographic region, from Alpine and northern habitats to tropical environments. Among its notable specimens are a snow leopard, red panda, musk ox and eared pheasant. The arrangement reflects the museum's original emphasis on zoogeography and the teaching value of comparing fauna from different regions.

Context and history

Novara's natural-history collections began with teaching collections and a botanical garden in the Napoleonic era. The Faraggiana Ferrandi family later created a private zoo and museum at Meina. Their collection was donated to Novara and installed in the family palace in 1959. Subsequent additions have expanded the holdings while retaining the zoogeographic arrangement.