Museo di scienze naturali Bergamo: a source of pride for the city

Museo di scienze naturali Bergamo: once inside, you gape in front of the enormous copy of an adult Mammut with its puppy, but there are a lot of flagships that make this museum a place of excellence for the scientific culture.

For more than fifty years, Piazza Citadella in the Upper City houses the Museo Civico di Scienze Naurali (Civic Museum of Natural Science) titled to the first director Enrico Caffi which reorganized the collections and supported their growth with its work. The need of enrich the city with a science museum was born at the end of the Nineteenth century when the “Consiglio del Regio Istituto Tecnico” decided to collect its own naturalistic operas in order to be accessible to the community.

Thanks to its collections of every naturalistic branch of knowledge, the Museum is now a source of pride for the City of the Orobie. Not only are there exhibitions about Earth Sciences and Zoology but also an ethnography collection dedicated to Non-European cultures.

The exhibitions about Earth Science involve many evidences that come from the territory of Bergamo and also from the rest of the world. They consist of many minerals useful for humankind, ornamental stones and research materials about building stone.

The zoologic exhibitions include species from around the world and others typical of the Fauna of Bergamo. There are evidences of great historic importance, as instance the last bear from Bergamo and the migratory dove, a bird from North America exstiguished in the Twentieth Century. Regarding the invertebrates there is a rich collection of arthropods that includes more than one million artefacts.

Among the paleontological collections, you can’t miss some fossils form the territory of Bergamo as the triassic fauna, witnesses of ancient tropical seabeds and also the sensational discovery of a fossil of an exstiguished deer dating back more than 700.000 years ago.

During the year, in order to make the audience aware of naturalistic asset, the Museo di Scienze Naturali organizes temporary exhibitions, educational activities for schools and cultural initiatives open to all.

Another important thing is the sensory journey that allow a direct contact with some natural finds and Braille captions in order to be usable also from blind people.

Visiting hours:

April – September: 9:00am -12:30pm and 2:30-6:00pm. Saturdays and holidays: 9:00am -7:00pm.

Closed on Mondays.

October – March: 9:00am -12:30pm and 2:30-5:30pm.

Closed on Mondays, January 1st and December 25th.

Free admission

By car: motorway A4, Bergamo exit, follow the indications to Città Alta (Upper City) and Largo Colle Aperto.

On sunday afternoon and during oublic holidays Upper City is closed to traffic. You can reach the museum using the cable car.

By train: take the train FS to Bergamo, then the ATB bus line 1A “Città Alta” and get off at the last stop.