Geological Survey of Italy Portal

The prestigious geological and historical collections of the Geological Survey of Italy will finally be exhibited and made available to the scientific world and to the entire community after more than 25 years, thanks to the agreement signed on January 29, 2021 by the Director General of ISPRA, Dr. . Alessandro Bratti, and the General Director of the Museums of MiBACT, dr. Massimo Osanna. The new "Quintino Sella" Museum of Italian Geopaleontology will exhibit the collections of the Earth Science Sector created by Quintino Sella and Felice Giordano, since the beginning of the Unitary State, and will be located  in the same building as the Museum of Civilization at the EUR.

An immense cultural heritage that includes paleontological collections with over 100 thousand fossils, vertebrate and invertebrate finds, the oldest of which dating back to 570 million years ago, including 244 "type fossils" of immense scientific value, the litho-mineralogical collections with over 55 thousand samples of rocks, minerals and decorative and ornamental building materials, including the prestigious collections of Marmi Pescetto and De Santis, the historical collections, with wonderful geological models, historical furnishings, technical instruments and objects from the history of the Geological Survey of Italy.

One of the first geological museums in Europe in the second half of the 1800s, inaugurated by King Umberto I in 1883, after a cultural loss lasting over 25 years, thanks to this agreement, it will finally come back to life. An heritage of enormous scientific and historical, geological and documentary value of the Italian territory, as underlined by the head of ISPRA museum activities, Roberta Rossi, which returns to be a common heritage, at the service of students, citizens and scholars, who through the new Museum, will be able to access not only the precious finds, but will also be able to understand the importance of the geological knowledge of the territory in which they live.