Palazzo dei Musei – Museo Calderini

It was thanks to Pietro Calderini (1824–1906), a figure of great prominence in Valsesian society in the later nineteenth century, that a Museo di Storia Naturale was established in Varallo, with the aim of supporting the study of the sciences through the direct observation of specimens taken from nature and made available to students. The museum was inaugurated in 1867, and some twenty years later archaeological, ethnographic, and humanistic collections were added to the natural history holdings, turning it into a kind of Wunderkammer. From the time of its foundation in 1867 the museum already began to receive “exotic” objects. This was made possible thanks to individuals who, during their journeys abroad and while remaining in constant contact with the founder, Pietro Calderini, purchased objects of various kinds to be donated to their hometown museum. As a result, today one can admire objects that display both geographical and thematic diversity, such as African and Asian musical instruments, vases of Chinese derivation, and Indian terracotta dolls. As early as 1868 a Peruvian mummy, belonging to the Chancay cultural sphere, arrived at the museum.