Museo di storia naturale dell'Accademia dei Fisiocritici Siena

ORARI DI APERTURA E VISITA:
Monday and Friday 9-19; Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 9-15; Saturday 14-19
TICKETS: Free, free contribution.

The Museum of Natural History of the Academy of Sciences of Siena called de 'Fisiocritici originated in 1691 with the foundation of the Academy, since 1996 it is part of the System of the Sienese Museums, today the Sienese Museums Foundation. The finds grew with the collections of Giuseppe Baldassarri (1700-1781), doctor and professor of Natural History in the Siena University, as well as Superintendent of the Academy's Natural History collection and President of the same until his death. To these were added the collections of Biagio Bartalini (1750-1822) who succeeded him in the chair and in the care of the Museum. The museum took on consistency in the second half of the 18th century, enriching itself over time through donations; collects collections coming largely from southern Tuscany. Around 1970 the Museum was rearranged keeping the nineteenth-century exhibition; improvements are constantly made for greater educational usability. In 1694 the Academy moved to the Casa della Sapienza, then the seat of the University and today the Municipal Library of the Intronati, starting a close collaboration with the Siena University, sanctioned by a convention. During the eighteenth century, due to both an earthquake and the political events that characterized this late eighteenth century, the Academy suffered considerable damage, limiting its work which resumed only after its transfer to its current location, a former Camaldolese monastery , received as a gift in 1816 by Grand Duke Ferdinand III. The Museum is divided into three sections: the Zoological one, housed in the upper part of the cloister of the monastery, in which the nineteenth-century collections that cover all classes of animals (molluscs, insects, birds, mammals, fish and reptiles) are collected, the Geological, housed in the lower part of the cloister, which houses various collections of minerals and rocks, very interesting are the swarms of meteorites that fell in 1794 from parts of Lucignano d'Asso and a singular collection of terracotta mushrooms, finally follows the Paleontological section, which collects fossils from all eras (paleozoic ferns, ammonites and Jurassic belemites). The Academy also has a library which houses around 800 manuscripts and almost 15,000 volumes and brochures dated from the seventeenth century onwards.