Museo della Preistoria "Luigi Donini"

The Luigi Donini is an Archaeological and Prehistorical Museum located in San Lazzaro di Savena, a few steps away from the Metropolitan city of Bologna. It can also be considered as a local museum as the majority part of the archaeological finds exhibited have been unearthed in the area around. Thus, the Museum is deeply embedded into the landscape nearby, reflecting its complex and long-lasting history.

Nowadays, the museum offers three exhibition rooms and a series of reconstructions, known as Preistopark, located in the building backyard. The first floor room, or Human Evolution one, carries visitors in a “back in time travel”, starting from the first human species up to the modern human, ourselves, through all the secrets, tools and innovations that our ancestors made through the time. One of the ground floor room, or Late Glacial Maximum Animals and Landscapes one, shows a reconstruction of the taiga-steppa landscape typical of the Last Glaciation, with all the animals which used to lived there. Guests can also observe the archaeological bones discovered nearby which helped researchers to reproduce the animal dimensions and visit an incredible reconstruction of a chalk cave, another typical feature of this territory. The third room, or Villanovian one, displays the grave goods unearthed in the Villanovian necropolis of Caselle. If this is not enough, visitors can also find other actual size reconstructions in the outside area, with the latest reproduction of a prehistorical mammoth bones hat.