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Established in 1932, the Municipal Zoological Museum is the custodian of some five million preserved items that range from small mollusc shells that measure just a few millimetres, to a 16 meter-long blue whale.
Some of the items were obtained as part of an agreement with the then “Regia Università di Roma (now known as “La Sapienza”) that had already taken over the prestigious collection previously belonging to the Pontifical Archigymnasium, and in part from donations made after the museum had opened.
That said, the bulk of this vast heritage is kept in particular storage areas and is made available to researchers and academics for study purposes and only sporadically exhibited to the general public.
The museum can rightly be described therefore as a true repository for all biodiversity as well as a valuable legacy for the community.
The common thread that binds the new exhibition trail is biodiversity in the animal world. It leads visitors through rooms on animal passions, living on the edge, the coral reef, the swamps of the Roman countryside, the Arrigoni degli Oddi bird collection, mammals, amphibians and reptiles and into the scenographic skeleton room. Thanks to the use of various techniques including multi-media and multi-sensory tools, visitors are able to find out about all sorts of animal species, understand their origins and how they have adapted to survive in a multitude of different habitats.
