Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze

The Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze is a natural history museum in 6 major collections, located in Florence, Italy. It is part of the University of Florence. Museum collections are open mornings except Wednesday, and all day Saturday; an admission fee is charged.

The museum was established on February 21, 1775 by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo as the Imperial Regio Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale. At that time it consisted of several natural history collections housed within the palazzo Torrigiani on Via Romana. Through the past two centuries, it has grown significantly and now forms one of the finest collections in Italy.

Collections

Today's collections are as follows:

• Giardino dei Semplici (Via Micheli, 3) - Europe's third oldest botanical garden, established in 1545, now containing some 9,000 plant specimens.

• Museo di Botanica (Via La Pira, 4) - a large herbarium of approximately 4 million specimens, including the historic collections of Andrea Cesalpino (1563), claimed to be the first scientific herbarium, Philip Barker Webb, and Odoardo Beccari.

• Museo di Geologia e Paleontologia (Via La Pira, 4) - About 200,000 specimens from the collections of noted geologists and paleontologists (Fucini, Dainelli, Marinelli, De Stefani, Stefanini, D'Ancona, Pecchioli). The vertebrate fossil collection (26,000 specimens) is of particular interest, with mammal fossils from the Pliocene and Pleistocene, primarily recovered from Tuscany and Valdarno, including Oreopithecus...... ... ...
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