The Museum illustrates, through an exhibition full of suggestions, two of the most significant realities of this area: the environment, understood as a set of naturalistic and landscape values at the center of which are the outcrops of the Bolognese chalks, and the testimonies of the first human population.
The exhibits on display, all of local origin, tell of a remote time, when the Savena, Zena and Idice valleys were populated by large animals suitable for ecosystems different from the current one, by men who were hunters and gatherers and, with the passing of millennia, from the first settled communities.
Among the most important and high scientific value collections, that of the prehistoric and paleontological deposit of the Cava Filo stands out, a site that is part of the landscape evidence “Karstism in the Evaporites and Caves of the Northern Apennines” included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The Luigi Donini Archaeological Museum of Prehistory is located in San Lazzaro di Savena, a few steps from the metropolitan city of Bologna. It can be considered a local museum, since most of the archaeological finds on display were found in the surrounding area. Therefore, it fits perfectly into the area that surrounds it, reflecting its complex and long-lasting history.
Today the museum hosts three exhibition rooms and a series of reconstructions located in the garden behind the museum.
The room on the first floor, the Evolution of Man room, allows visitors to take a journey back in time, from the most ancient human species to modern man, through the secrets, tools and discoveries that our ancestors have developed over time.
One of the rooms on the ground floor, the Hall of Animals and Disappeared Environments, shows a reconstruction of the taiga-steppe environment typical of the Last Ice Age, together with the animals that lived there.
Visitors can also observe the faunal finds which have allowed scholars to reconstruct the dimensions of these animals and to visit the reconstruction of a plaster cave, another typical element of this area.
The third room, the Villanoviana room, houses the funerary objects from the tombs present in the Caselle necropolis.
Finally, visitors can find other life-size reconstructions in the outdoor area, known as Preistopark, with the recent reproduction of a Paleolithic hut made of mammoth bones.
Museo della Preistoria “Luigi Donini”
Via Fratelli Canova, 49
San Lazzaro di Savena (Bologna)
Emilia Romagna – Italy
What to do see where to go in the province in the surrounding area near places to visit weekends Activities for families attractions Museums jurassik prehistory curiosities