Museo Speleologico Franco Anelli

The Museo Speleologico Franco Anelli turns karst science into a walkable story through illustrated panels, research materials and the archives of Puglia's speleologists, honouring the man who first descended into the Grave in 1938.

Why it matters

Dedicated to Franco Anelli, the speleologist from Lodi who explored and publicised the Grotte di Castellana from 1938 onward, the museum was inaugurated on 23 January 2000, sixty-two years after his first descent. The Gruppo Puglia Grotte, a speleological association founded in 1971, designed and manages the museum.

What to notice

Illustrated panels and scientific materials explain karst phenomena, the geological evolution of the Murgia and the techniques speleologists use underground. The museum also houses the Centro di Documentazione Speleologica Pugliese "Franco Orofino", the official seat of the Federazione Speleologica Pugliese, with a specialist library, periodicals and a photographic archive. Architect Pietro Favia designed the building in 1952 as part of a modern tourist district above the caves. Educational laboratories address astronomy, biospeleology, geology and ecology.

Context and history

The museum's building has its own dramatic biography. In 1952 the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno financed a broad tourism and urban plan for the area above the caves; only fragments were realised, among them offices for the cave management, the Torre degli Ascensori and a large hall destined for a speleological museum. By 1953 Anelli himself wrote that the "spacious and luminous hall" was complete — yet the museum inside was never fitted out. The space fell into indifference and neglect, and for a period even operated as a discotheque before being abandoned. Revival came in 1999, when Società Grotte s.r.l. entrusted the Gruppo Puglia Grotte with fitting out, managing and promoting the museum, funded through the European POP Puglia 1994–96 programme. The inauguration on 23 January 2000 was attended by figures of Italian speleology including Paolo Forti of the Istituto Italiano di Speleologia and Angelo Naseddu, then vice president of the Società Speleologica Italiana. Anelli, born in Lodi on 18 October 1899 and a natural sciences graduate of Bologna, had died in 1977 without seeing the hall put to its intended use.