ItalyUpdate

Rome's Sapienza University is to reopen its historic Science Museum collections to the public one Saturday every month. The three departments - geological, mineral and paleontology - contain many rare and interesting items, such as the fragment of a meteorite from the planet Mars, remains of dwarf elephants found in Sicily, the skull of a leopard 4000,000 years old, the skeleton of a fearsome meat-eating Allosaurus Fragilis from the Jurassic period, a 100,000 fossil collection and the celebrated Dactyliotheca  a mounted collection of 388 gemstones donated by Pope Leo XII in 1824.

Founded in 1804, this is Italy's oldest science museum.

Info:  Tel. ++39.06.49914887 www.musei.uniroma1.it