Museum of Natural History of Genoa

The Natural History Museum was founded at the end of the 19th century on the initiative of Giacomo Doria , a lover of Natural History, who exhibited his collections together with those of Lorenzo Pareto and Prince Oddone of Savoy.

Subsequently, this nucleus was enriched by acquisitions from expeditions financed by Doria and by bequests and donations. The vastness of the material collected made it necessary to transfer the museum headquarters to a building specially designed and built at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Today the museum is the oldest in the city and certainly one of the most important in the city. The collections are displayed in showcases equipped with information devices on their content: it is a total of about 4 and a half million finds and specimens.

The layout provides for a subdivision into 23 rooms . The itinerary starts from the space dedicated to Paleontology and continues with the rooms displaying collections of high scientific value , mostly zoological . There are also sections displaying botanical specimens and collections of fossils, rocks and minerals . Among the most important collections we must mention that of Mammals , that of Birds and that of Insects.