Museo Zoologico La Specola

Description:

• Italy has very few zoos, but this is the largest zoological collection, with rooms full of insects, crustaceans, and stuffed birds and mammals -- everything from ostriches and apes to a rhinoceros. The museum was founded here in 1775, and the collections are still displayed in the style of an old-fashioned natural sciences museum, with specimens crowded into beautiful old wood-and-glass cases. The last 10 rooms contain an important collection of human anatomical wax models crafted between 1775 and 1814 by Clemente Susini for medical students. The life-size figures are flayed, dissected, and disemboweled to varying degrees and are truly disgusting, but fascinating.

• © Frommer's 2013