Museum of Nature and Humankind
In the University where the scientific method was born,
the Museum of Nature and Humankind continues the tradition and opens its rooms to all curious minds
The Museum of Nature and Humankind, inaugurated in 2023, is a large cultural reality of the University of Padova aimed at a general and international audience. It is an interdisciplinary, interactive and multimedia science museum, which leads visitors on a unique and exciting experience and shows how the Earth is a great system of physical, chemical and biological relationships of which man is naturally an integral part.
An exhibition area of about 4,000 square meters, with engaging exhibition solutions and wide selections of our collections of finds, more than 200,000, of Mineralogy, Geology and Paleontology, Zoology and Anthropology.
Developed on three floors, it displays 3,500 historical assets, 25 tactile models, 193 showcases, 89 multimedia stations and exhibits, 80 room panels and 31 full-wall graphic panels.
The integration and union of the precious finds from the different collections revealthe coherent and exciting narration of a planetary history, written in rocks, fossils, animal adaptations, and the millenary artifacts of humanity, up to the unprecedented phase we are entering, when a single species, Homo sapiens, became capable of profoundly altering all ecosystems.
A journey through time that puts human beings and nature in continuous relationship, telling the complexities of planet Earth from an evolutionary perspective. From meteorites and comets, messengers of the universe, the Museum's narrative crosses the geological eras to the time of human events, the Anthropocene, stimulating a reflection on the impact of people on biodiversity and climate change; A journey from the heart of the Earth to that of living beings, made up of infinite connections, in which the history of science helps us to interpret the world to come.
The Museo della Natura e dell'Uomo is a large museum, spread over three floors that make up a very large exhibition area (about 4,000 square meters between permanent exhibition and temporary exhibitions), with an exhibition design entrusted to the Guicciardini and Magni studio.
It was born from the redesign of the spaces of Palazzo Cavalli, a historic building built in the second half of the sixteenth century at the gates of the center of Padova, which now houses the collections of 4 previous Unipd museums – Mineralogy, Geology and Paleontology, Zoology and Anthropology – harmonizing them in the museum itinerary that crosses the various spaces of the structure.
The auditorium on the ground floor and the garden lend themselves to hosting a rich syllabus of events open to citizens.
