Gemma 1786 – Mineralogical and Geological Museum Estense is the Museum of the University Department of Earth Sciences, wanted and enriched with bequests and donations from members of the Este family, and whose history has accompanied the cultural evolution that has characterized the city and the its territory.
Il The Museum of Paleontology has important historical collections, harvested from the second half of the nineteenth century and consist of tens of thousands of fossils of invertebrates (molluscs, echinoderms, arthropods, etc..), Vertebrates (including dinosaurs and marine reptiles) and vegetable. In 1991 he founded the Hall of Dinosaurs in which there are four skeletons of dinosaurs and other fossil reptiles and mammals.
The Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy exhibits in its 14 rooms over 3,500 stuffed animals from all over the world and a large collection of insects, collected since the end of the 1700s.
The Botanical Garden was born as “Giardino dei Semplici” in 1758 at the behest of Duke Francesco III d’Este, who assigned part of the Ducal Gardens to the cultivation of medicinal plants, under the guidance of Gaetano Rossi. In 1772 the duke entrusted the design of the flower beds to the neoclassical architect Giuseppe Maria Soli. Later the illustrious botanists who directed the garden increased the living collections, the Herbariums, the collections of plant finds. In particular, Giovanni De ‘Brignoli di Brunnhoff (1818 1855) enriched the garden with exotic, in accordance with the collecting of Francis IV. The architectural complex of the Ducal Greenhouses and the Herbarium Museum, which are still functional today, dates back to that time. The Botanical Garden retains the ancient subdivision: the “system” of flower beds and the pool, the mound, the flat area with the arboretum. Among the thematic sectors, inspired by the modern principles of scientific museology: the succulent greenhouse, the hot-humid greenhouse, the rock, the moat and the “conservation collections” for biodiversity protection projects. The Botanical Garden of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia is located in the historic center of the city, covers an area of about 1 hectare and has 300 square meters of covered area for sheltering and displaying plants.
The Astronomical and Geophysical Museum is located in the eastern tower (built in 1634) of the Doge’s Palace and preserves the equipment of the Specola, the Astronomical and Meteorological Observatory founded by Duke Francesco IV of Austria Este in 1827, which testify to the extraordinary advancement of knowledge in the scientific field in nineteenth-century Modena. You can admire the moon map drawn in 1662 by the Modenese astronomer and mathematician Geminiano Montanari, an authentic monument of seventeenth-century selenography.
The Laboratory of Mathematical Machines collects 150 machines and functioning copies of ancient geometric instruments from classical Greece to the present day, built by teachers of the Tassoni Liceo Scientifico of Modena.
The Anatomical Museums collect historical-scientific artifacts created to support the teaching of anatomy and Giovan Battista Manfredini’s Collection of Obstetric Terracottas from the 1700s.
(source it.wikipedia.org)
