Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
SIGHTS
SCUOLA GRANDE DI SAN ROCCO
See
Click here
.
MUSEUM
I FRARI (CHIESA DI SANTA MARIA GLORIOSA DEO FRARI)
See
Click here
.
CHURCH
MUSEO DI STORIA NATURALE DI VENEZIA
MAP
MUSEUM
GOOGLE MAP
(Fondaco dei Turchi; 041 275 02 06;
http://msn.visitmuve.it
;
Salizada del Fontego dei Turchi 1730, Santa Croce;
adult/reduced €8/5.50, or with Museum Pass; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun, to 5pm Tue-Fri Nov-May; San Stae)
Never
mind the doge: insatiable curiosity rules Venice, and inside the Museo di Storia Naturale
(Museum of Natural History) it runs wild. The adventure begins upstairs with dinosaurs,
then dashes through evolution to Venice's great age of exploration, when adventurers like
Marco Polo fetched peculiar specimens from distant lands. Around every turn, scientific
marvels await discovery in luminous new exhibits.
The obvious stars of the
museo
are the spotlit dinosaurs, including a terrifying ouransaur-
us from the Sahara and a psittacosaurus mongoliensis, a 120-million-year-old baby-dino-
saur skeleton from the Gobi Desert. But the curators and designers of the museum's stun-
ning new exhibits steal the show, leading visitors through evolution with a trail of dinosaur
footprints and into galleries that follow the tracks of Venetian explorers. In hot pursuit of
ancient legends from mummies to headhunters, macabre colonial trophies like elephant's
feet, and circus-sideshow curiosities including a two-headed goat, Venetian explorers like
Giuseppe Reali and Giancarlo Ligabue stumbled across wondrous scientific specimens.
As you might expect from this lagoon city, the marine-biology exhibits are especially
breathtaking. The most startling ceiling in Venice isn't a salon Tiepolo fresco but the
museo
's 19th-century
wunderkammer
(cabinet of curiosities), covered with shark jaws, poisonous
blowfish and other outrageous sea creatures. Corals and starfish fill glass columns in the
glowing tidepool chamber, leading into a marine-blue room with deep-sea specimens en-
cased in glass bubbles. This undersea journey is accompanied by a spooky soundtrack that
brings to mind whale-song recordings and Philip Glass.
The museum's grand finale downstairs is comparatively anti-climatic: a fish tank of
Venetian coastal specimens bubbling for attention. Still, don't miss a close-up glimpse of
the enormous dugout canoe moored at the water door - an unexpected sight for
vaporetto
riders along the Grand Canal.
