Città della Pieve’s Museo di Storia Naturale e del Territorio dedicated to Antonio Verri is situated on the first floor of Palazzo della Corgna. It displays numerous objects and samples from the private collections of Antonio Verri and Paolo De Simone, both of whom lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The first, a native of Città della Pieve, was a respected geologist and lover of Natural Sciences and he also held the position of President of the Italian Geological Society and carried out very thorough studies on the environment and area of Città della Pieve. The second, who moved to Città della Pieve in 1886, was an agronomist and naturalist with a passion for collecting seeds and animal samples. The museum is owned by the Municipality and was inaugurated in 2009, but studies of the samples and the cataloguing of the materials had already started in 1994. The whole project was made possible thanks to the Cooperative IGEA, the Giovani Ecologisti di Città della Pieve and the Centro Ateneo per i Musei Scientifici dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia. The museum is divided into three rooms, displaying didactic scientific instruments used between 1800 and 1900, rocks, minerals, fossils, remains of invertebrates and, thanks to a private donation, fossils from the Arabian Peninsula .
There are also precious herbariums, entomological boxes, a spermatheca (a collection of vegetable seeds) a xylotheque (a set of wood specimens) and some taxidermized vertebrates. The museum has also dedicated a space that replicates the environments that characterize Città della Pieve and has dedicated space to a replica of Antonio Verri’s studio and created an educational laboratory in which mainly schools can carry out activities aimed at exploring the natural environment.
A visit to the museum is highly recommended for lovers of nature and the Umbria region of all ages.