The Sienese section of the National Antarctic Museum takes visitors on journey that starts with the history of Antarctic exploration and looks at how the study of the continent developed. It then touches on the principal themes of Antarctic research: geology, glaciology, paleoclimatology, biology, atmospheric and marine science, and Antarctic cartography.
The museum in Siena holds more than 20,000 rock and fossil specimens and more than 1,000 meteorites, all collected from the Antarctic under the auspices of the National Programme of Antarctic Research. The meteorite collection is one of the most important in Italy, the third in the world in terms of number and variety, after the national collections of the United States and Japan.
Visitors can therefore look at Antarctic rocks, minerals and meteorites, touch fossils more than 300 million years old, and, through films and interactive worktops, observe the animal life that manages to survive on the continent and the surrounding sea. They can also search for undiscovered meteorites over a field of blue ice.
