Tour audio Cabinet of Natural History

The collections of the Cabinet of Natural History include splendid naturalistic models and multiple zoological, botanical, mineralogical and paleontological finds, to which historically and scientifically relevant names of producers, preparers, naturalists, and collectors are linked.

These collections, which were originally located inside the Museo Tecnologico of the Institute, were organized with the purpose of providing knowledge of natural products by favoring an association of their use and transformations with manufactured products and the machinery necessary for their relative work processes.

In order to promote the knowledge of the territory, mineralogical and lithological collections developed, due to the great economic importance of raw materials extracted from mines and Tuscan deposits. Moreover, in the botanical field, the herbariums of local interest documenting the flora of certain areas were flanked by collections more closely related to teaching, such as the monothematic ones, relating to plants of agronomic or pharmaceutical utility.

The amplification of the collections, in terms of both quantity and value of the finds, took place constantly, thanks to the numerous contacts in the scientific and cultural field that the Institute created and maintained in the territory.

This resulted, among other things, in important donations of scientific collections from cultured and generous figures of the aristocracy as well as from cultural institutions of the city. For example, Marchioness Marianna Panciatichi Ximenes d’Aragona Paulucci made a herbarium that donated to the school in 1902.

Count Girolamo de’Bardi Gualterotti, instead, offered a collection of memorabilia, ancient instruments, seventeenth-century globes and rare naturalistic collections, that arrived in 1892 from
the Pio Istituto de’Bardi.

Both the brilliant network of contacts and relationships and the participation in international and local exhibitions were of the essence in order to acquire excellent naturalistic and manufacturing productions, allowing the Institute to compete with the most important European scientific institutions of the time, in terms of teaching and technological innovation.

Four showcases located along the gallery on the ground floor point out the vastness and value of these collections.