Museo di Storia Naturale Don Bosco – Istituto Valsalice

The Museo di Storia Naturale Don Bosco, located at the Salesian institute Valsalice, was inaugurated in 1879 by Don Giovanni Bosco himself. Over time various natural history and ethnographic collections have flowed into it, coming from Salesian missions scattered around the world. As regards the Americas, the museum preserves ethnographic and archaeological materials from Central and South America. The first artifacts, coming from Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and Paraguay, arrived in 1892 following Salesian participation in the Italo-American exhibition held in Genoa on the occasion of the fourth centenary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. Subsequently, the museum’s collection was enriched in 1898 and 1911 with further objects from the missions, which were displayed during the Salesian missionary exhibitions held in those same years. Following the 1925 exhibition, part of the material was transferred to the museum at Colle Don Bosco (then called Museo dei Becchi). An important donation was made between 1960 and 1970, when numerous Yanomami artifacts collected by Don Luigi Cocco during his missionary work in the Orinoco region entered the museum’s collections. The museum’s current configuration is the result of a process of rethinking and reinstallation carried out between 1967 and 1969, the latter being the year of its inauguration.