MUSEO CIVICO CRAVERI DI STORIA NATURALE

The Craveri Natural History Museum is the most important Natural History Museum in the province of Cuneo and was founded in 1843 as the Craveri family's private natural history museum. The natural history collections of their father Angelo and his sons Federico and Ettore, who collected many artefacts in Mexico between 1840 and 1859, were exhibited on the second floor of their home. In 1890 the Museum was donated by the heirs to the City of Bra. The Museum consists of twelve rooms on three floors where only a fraction of the numerous collections that have been acquired from its foundation to the present day are exhibited. These include minerals, rocks, fossils, faunal and botanical specimens, and prehistoric Saharan artefacts. On the ground floor are the historical room dedicated to its founders, the Earth Science Room and the Local Geopalaeontology Room. The first floor is dedicated to Zoology (Hall of Invertebrates, Hall of Insects, Hall of Amphibian Fish and Reptiles, Hall of Ornithology and Hall of European Avifauna) Several trophies of African ungulates are arranged along the stairs. On the second floor are the Ancient Ornithological Collections Room, the Tenerè Prehistory Room, the Braidese Habitats Room and the Meteorology Room. The most interesting exhibits include the fossil skull of the Sirenio di Bra belonging to the Metaxitherium subapenninum species, which lived in the Mediterranean during the Pliocene and was found by Federico Craveri in 1876 in the Braidese hills; the now extinct Imperial Woodpecker from Mexico; the Craveri's Oryx, a bird from Lower California described for the first time by Federico Craveri, as well as a rich collection of hummingbirds. The collections are displayed according to a systematic criterion, with the exception of mammals, which are housed in all rooms. The museum has a large garden used for events and exhibitions, a teaching garden for organic cultivation projects with schools and a greenhouse with a display of succulent plants. Library The multimedia scientific library is open to the public for loan and consultation. It is mainly aimed at researchers and university students for research and teaching activities. It consists of about 7,000 monographs, numerous popular magazines and about 20,000 scientific abstracts and pamphlets. The Museum is equipped with a modern teaching laboratory in which microscopy activities in the biological field, chemical and geological activities are carried out for schools of all levels