The Giuseppe Olivi Adriatic Zoology Museum presents the historical zoological collection of Trieste and Rovinj, acquired by the Universityà degli Studi di Padova in 1968 by professor Umberto D’Ancona. Marine animals are kept in liquid and were collected exclusively in the Adriatic between the second methà of the nineteenth century and 1943.
The museum presents bodies and marine environments, raccontandone biology, ecology and the traditions of fishing. Hosts a copy of basking shark or cetorino, a female 8 meters caught for error in 2003 off the coast of chioggiotte. It owes its name to the Chioggiotto Naturalist Giuseppe Olivi, lived in the eighteenth century, author of the first Adriatic Zoology. It is divided into the following rooms:
- Shark’s Hall. The cetorino welcomes visitors at the entrance of the museum, on the second floor of Palazzo Grassi. The room introduces the world of the sea and its inhabitants, illustrating the different marine environments, their peculiar characteristics and the factors that threaten biodiversity and balances.
- Collection’s Hall. In the hall of the third floor are exposed more than 300 original preparations coming from historical collection of Trieste and Rovinj, exposed in six circular showcases and illustrating the variety of species and organisms that populate the Adriatic Sea.Â
- Senses’ Hall. Multimedia Installations and interactive panels illustrate the meaning of which marine organisms have, between which the electroreception, the capacity to perceive the electric fields, typical of sharks, and the lateral line, which makes possible the complex synchrony of shoals of fish; to these is added the meaning più “classics”, common also to human beings, more or less developed.
- Trophic Network’s Hall. has as subject the food relations that you create in the sea between animal and vegetable organisms. Some interactive workstations allow insights about the teeth and the different ways to procure the nourishment.
- Video Room. Illustrates the different aspects of the marine environment: local tradition of fishing, recent engineering operations, the environment of Tegnùand (rocky formations submerged) and finally the past and the folklore of Chioggia, through the memory of its protagonists.
museoolivi.chioggia@unipd.it
