Cabinet of Natural History

Activities of Preservation

The collections, formed during the 19th century, suffered mechanical damage and considerable deterioration due to dust and parasitic infestations. Since the 1980s, the long and patient restoration work has begun aimed at reorganizing all the collections, their conservation and their enhancement. In particular, the recovery activity, still in progress, is aimed at the reorganization of the collections, the revision and subsequent computerized cataloguing and finally the care and management of the material thus re-evaluated.

Among the naturalistic collections, which globally boast over 47,000 samples, the sectors of mineralogy and lithology are well represented, with large series of finds that offer a broad overview of the main sites of discovery, especially in Tuscany, and the use of raw materials in the past.

As far as botany is concerned, in addition to peculiar collections such as the Xylological Collection of Tuscany, award-winning at the local and international exhibitions of the mid-nineteenth century, the conspicuous series of herbariums is relevant, including those that belonged to Count Girolamo de’ Bardi, to Baron Joseph Antoir. and to the Marquise Marianna Paulucci.

The zoological collections (more than 9,000 specimens) includes the entomological collection of Count Francesco Guicciardini, a series of osteological finds with some suggestive preparations made according to the Beauchêne system (bones disjointed and mounted remotely in their natural position) and a collection of over 250 liquid animals, collected in the Neapolitan gulf in the second half of the 19th century and prepared at the Zoological Station of Naples.

Paleontology is represented by about 1,600 fossils, including numerous remains of large mammals found in the Tuscan Upper Valdarno.

Strongly linked to the natural sector, there is also a wide range of industrial and manufacturing productions from the original Technological Museum, which concern the various branches of industry, from metallurgy and mechanics to construction and textiles, and offer a picture of the main Italian manufacturing producers at the level of small local companies and large industrial realities.

In the biomodeling sector, prestigious names of the Florentine waxwork tradition stand out, such as Luigi Calamai, who is responsible for a mycological collection of over 250 preparations, and Egisto Tortori, author of 66 naturalistic murals.

Finally, to remember: a collection of over 180 models of morphology and plant anatomy made by Robert and Reinhold Brendel in Berlin, various artifacts of Parisian origin produced in papier-mâché by Louis Auzoux or in plaster by the Maison Emile Deyrolle and a collection of over 100 glass marine invertebrate models made by Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolph in Dresden.