The Giancarlo Ligabue Museum of Natural History of Venice, until 30 October 2019 Civic Museum of Natural History, is located inside the Fondaco dei Turchi, the important palace in Venice overlooking the Grand Canal.
Origins and Early History of the Building (13th–16th Centuries)
The Fontego dei Turchi was originally constructed in the first half of
the 13th century (around 1225–1227) as a grand palazzo for the Pesaro
family, a prominent Venetian noble lineage. Designed in the
Venetian-Byzantine style, it featured an imposing façade overlooking the
Grand Canal, characterized by a double loggia (open galleries) with
arched openings, corner towers reminiscent of early medieval defensive
architecture, and battlements along the roofline. This design reflected
Venice's role as a maritime republic deeply influenced by Byzantine
aesthetics, with the building serving dual purposes: as a luxurious
residence and a "fontego" (fondaco), a warehouse and trading depot for
exotic goods imported from the East, such as spices, silks, and precious
metals.
The structure's strategic location facilitated commerce, with
ground-floor storage spaces and upper levels for living quarters. In
1381, amid political shifts, the Republic of Venice seized the palazzo
and gifted it to Nicolò (or Niccolò II) d’Este, the Marquis of Ferrara,
as a gesture of alliance. It remained in the Este family's possession
for over a century, hosting notable figures like Emperor Frederick III
during his 1469 visit to Venice. By the early 16th century, ownership
reverted to the Republic, which leased it to various foreign dignitaries
and wealthy families, including the Aldobrandini and Priuli families.
Transformation into the Turkish Fondaco (17th–19th Centuries)
A
pivotal change occurred in 1621 when the Venetian Senate designated the
building as the exclusive fondaco for Ottoman Turkish merchants,
responding to growing trade relations with the Ottoman Empire. This
"Fontego dei Turchi" functioned as a self-contained enclave where
Turkish traders lived, stored goods, and conducted business under strict
Venetian regulations to prevent espionage or smuggling. It included
residential apartments, warehouses, and even a small mosque, operating
until 1838 when Ottoman trade declined due to shifting global commerce
and the end of the Venetian Republic in 1797 under Napoleonic conquest.
By the mid-19th century, the building had fallen into disrepair, its
once-grand façade obscured by neglect. In 1858–1869, under Austrian rule
and later the Kingdom of Italy, a major restoration was undertaken by
architects Camillo Boito and Federico Berchet. They aimed to revive its
13th-century Venetian-Byzantine appearance, drawing inspiration from
historical engravings like Jacopo de' Barbari's 1500 bird's-eye view of
Venice. The project involved reconstructing the double loggia,
reinstalling marble columns, and adding decorative elements like the
corner towers and crenellated roof, though some critics later deemed it
an overly romanticized "neo-Byzantine" interpretation rather than a
faithful replica. Post-restoration, from 1880 to 1923, it temporarily
housed the Museo Correr's collections, which included art, artifacts,
and early natural history items.
Establishment and Early
Development of the Museum (20th Century)
The Museum of Natural
History was formally established in 1923 as part of a broader effort to
reorganize Venice's civic collections under the Fondazione Musei Civici
di Venezia (MUVE). This move fulfilled the vision of Giandomenico Nardo,
a 19th-century naturalist who advocated for a dedicated natural history
institution in the 1830s. The Fontego dei Turchi was selected as its
permanent home, with initial collections transferred from the Museo
Correr, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, and private
donors. Key foundational contributors included Nicolò Contarini (whose
17th-century herbarium and zoological specimens formed early botanical
and zoological holdings), Giovanni Zanardini (algal collections),
Alessandro Pericle Ninni (ornithological and ichthyological items), and
Enrico Filippo Trois (ethnographic artifacts from Africa and Asia).
The museum's early focus was on the natural history of the Venetian
Lagoon, emphasizing local biodiversity, paleontology, and ethnography.
By the mid-20th century, it had grown through acquisitions, excavations,
and donations, amassing over 2 million objects spanning 700 million
years of Earth's history. Notable additions included fossil collections
from regional sites and a library exceeding 40,000 volumes, including
rare 16th–19th-century manuscripts. The institution officially opened to
the public in its current form in 1969, after further adaptations to the
building.
Role of Giancarlo Ligabue and Modern Expansions (Late
20th–21st Centuries)
A significant milestone came in the 1970s
through the contributions of Giancarlo Ligabue (1931–2015), a Venetian
entrepreneur, paleontologist, and explorer who founded the Ligabue Study
and Research Centre in 1978. Ligabue organized over 130 scientific
expeditions across five continents, yielding major discoveries. His 1973
expedition to the Ténéré Desert in Niger unearthed a near-complete
skeleton of Ouranosaurus nigeriensis, a 110-million-year-old dinosaur,
which he donated to the museum in 1975. This and other donations,
including fossils and ethnographic items, enriched the collections. In
recognition, the museum was renamed the "Museum of Natural History of
Venice Giancarlo Ligabue" in 2010.
Under MUVE management since its
inception, the museum underwent renovations in the late 20th and early
21st centuries to modernize exhibits while preserving the historic
structure. Key sections include the Cetacean Gallery (featuring whale
skeletons), a Marine Aquarium replicating the lagoon's "tegnùe"
coral-like reefs, "On the Tracks of Life" (paleontological timeline),
"Collecting to Astonish or Collecting for Research" (history of
scientific collecting), and "The Strategies of Life" (evolutionary
adaptations). Research initiatives focus on lagoon ecology, biodiversity
databases, and collaborations with universities and international
bodies.
In 2011 the building was delivered completely renovated and the
museum itinerary was renewed with 16 new rooms, a new garden and a
new entrance area. The new cetacean gallery has been set up on the
ground floor. The main rooms of the new route are the following:
Room of the Ligabue scientific expedition - Dedicated to the
scientific expedition of the archaeologist Giancarlo Ligabue to
Niger (Sahara Gadoufaoua) in 1972-1973, it presents many precious
finds including the skeleton of a dinosaur Ouranosaurus nigeriensis,
considered one of the most interesting finds in the world of this
type. The skeleton of a Sarcosuchus imperator, the largest crocodile
in history, was also placed next to it.
On the trail of life - It
includes five rooms that follow the path of life among the fossils,
starting from the first forms of life that appeared in the sea up to
the large animals present at the end of the glacial period in Italy
and in particular in the Veneto region, with a small final section
dedicated to man.
Gathering to amaze and to study - It represents
a section dedicated to the great explorers and collectors who have
contributed to creating the museum's scientific collections. These
are Giovanni Miani, Count Giuseppe De Reali and the anthropologist
and patron Giancarlo Ligabue. A reconstruction of a
sixteenth-seventeenth century wunderkammer leads to the exhibition
of museology in the modern sense, of the second half of the
eighteenth century Enlightenment, of Linneian classification and of
the analytical study of nature.
The path of life - Starting from
a circular multimedia room animated by a touchless computerized
system, which projects the images of hundreds of organisms that
lived on the planet in every environment like in a planetarium, the
visitor enters the last part of the path in which he crosses rooms
themes, dedicated to successive examples of declination, over time
and in different environments, of the general theme of adapting the
forms of organisms to their needs. The visitor can thus read from
reality the infinite solutions developed by evolution over the
course of millions of years of the history of life on our planet.
Acquario delle tegnùe - Currently closed to the public. On the
ground floor, five meters long and capable of holding over 5,000
liters of sea water, it reproduces the extraordinary environment of
the tegnùe and their biodiversity, with over 50 animal species
including invertebrates and fish. A precise reconstruction of the
environment and an effective didactic structure allow you to admire
numerous live species, discovering the characteristics and
curiosities about the different aspects of the biology and behavior
of these animals guided by an easy game. The local denomination of
Tegnùe refers to those natural rocky outcrops that are distributed
discontinuously in the western area of the Gulf of Venice, in
bathymetric ranges between 8 and 40 m. The dimensions can be very
different, from a few square meters to several thousand, with
elevations from the seabed ranging from a few decimetres in the
basic "slab" formations, to a few meters in the higher ones, often
located at greater depths. Numerous geological studies have allowed
a characterization of the outcrops from a morphological and
structural point of view, essentially reducing them to three
different types: clastic sedimentary rocks, commonly known as
"beachrocks"; sedimentary rocks of chemical deposit; organogenic
rocks, i.e. rocks produced by the action of building organisms,
plants and animals. These rock formations can be traced back to
shallow carbonate platform facies in temperate-cold waters. The
presence of "islands" of solid substrates in the homogeneous expanse
of sandy/muddy bottoms creates, albeit locally, areas rich in
micro-environments and ecological gradients which favor an increase
in specific diversity in the populations. Thus "oases" of extreme
biological richness are created, with an increase in the number of
species present, but also with a considerable biomass per unit area.
Among the many species present are Porifera, Coelenterates,
Annelids, among which are very numerous the Serpulids which often
cover every available surface overlapping in successive layers. Even
among the Echinoderms there are numerous species typically present
in the Tegnùe biocoenoses. Finally, the presence of numerous species
of Tunicates is typical. Also valuable fish species such as the
Homarus gammarus lobster, the corvina Sciaena umbra, the croaker
Umbrina cirrosa, the cod Trisopterus minutus, the conger eel Conger
conger and the sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax are in fact
particularly frequent in these environments, which in fact represent
for some species, such as lobster, exclusive environments.
The library is a specialist center united with the museum research institute. It collects materials that have various origins and works by important Venetian naturalists such as Giovanni Domenico Nardo, Nicolò Contarini, Giovanni Miani and Antonio Carlo Dondi Dall'Orologio. Since 1923 its headquarters have been located at the Fondaco dei Turchi. The library has a very rich heritage consisting of ancient and modern books as well as material of various kinds.