Description
Trieste's Natural History Museum holds more than two million specimens of botany, zoology, geology and palaeontology. It is home to an almost complete Triestine dinosaur and a great white shark over five metres long: a visit that wins over children and adults alike.
Since 2010 the museum is no longer in Piazza Hortis: its halls moved to the former barracks on Via Cumano, with the entrance on Via dei Tominz, in the same complex as the Diego de Henriquez War Museum for Peace.
The star is Antonio, a hadrosaur that lived 75 million years ago and was found at Villaggio del Pescatore, in the province of Trieste. Four metres long and 1.3 metres tall, it is one of the most complete dinosaurs ever discovered. It lived on an island in the ancient Tethys Ocean, between Africa and northern Europe.
A little further on swims Carlotta, motionless for more than a century: a 5.4-metre great white shark caught in 1906 in the Kvarner Gulf. She is the largest preserved shark in Europe, and seeing her size up close is quite something.
The food chain rooms line the animals up by who eats whom, each one facing its own food. The last room brings the visit into the city, among the species that have learned to live alongside people.
Among the birds, more than five thousand specimens of 550 species, rarities stand out such as New Zealand's kakapo, the Mexican quetzal and the birds of paradise of New Guinea. The fossilisation rooms tell instead how the Karst was born, among fossil shells and cave bear bones.
A small but surprising find is the Lonche jaw, more than 6,400 years old. One of its teeth bears the oldest archaeological evidence of a dental filling: the cavity was scraped out and then filled with beeswax.
The museum was founded in 1846 as a zoological cabinet and soon came under the patronage of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, the future Emperor of Mexico who built Miramare. Many specimens came from the expeditions of the time, such as the round-the-world voyage of the Austrian frigate Novara.
Since 2010 the museum is no longer in Piazza Hortis: its halls moved to the former barracks on Via Cumano, with the entrance on Via dei Tominz, in the same complex as the Diego de Henriquez War Museum for Peace.
The star is Antonio, a hadrosaur that lived 75 million years ago and was found at Villaggio del Pescatore, in the province of Trieste. Four metres long and 1.3 metres tall, it is one of the most complete dinosaurs ever discovered. It lived on an island in the ancient Tethys Ocean, between Africa and northern Europe.
A little further on swims Carlotta, motionless for more than a century: a 5.4-metre great white shark caught in 1906 in the Kvarner Gulf. She is the largest preserved shark in Europe, and seeing her size up close is quite something.
The food chain rooms line the animals up by who eats whom, each one facing its own food. The last room brings the visit into the city, among the species that have learned to live alongside people.
Among the birds, more than five thousand specimens of 550 species, rarities stand out such as New Zealand's kakapo, the Mexican quetzal and the birds of paradise of New Guinea. The fossilisation rooms tell instead how the Karst was born, among fossil shells and cave bear bones.
A small but surprising find is the Lonche jaw, more than 6,400 years old. One of its teeth bears the oldest archaeological evidence of a dental filling: the cavity was scraped out and then filled with beeswax.
The museum was founded in 1846 as a zoological cabinet and soon came under the patronage of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, the future Emperor of Mexico who built Miramare. Many specimens came from the expeditions of the time, such as the round-the-world voyage of the Austrian frigate Novara.