Piegaro, or precisely the hamlet of Pietrafitta, is home to one of the most important paleontological collections in all of Europe, housed in the Museo Paleontologico ‘Luigi Boldrini’.
The museum was named after Luigi Boldrini, who personally found the lignite deposits, undertook to keep them safe on his own property before the museum was built, catalogued them and then gave them ‘new life’ by making them available to the scientific community and the wider world in general. He found thousands of fossils belonging to many animal species, such as fish, amphibians, birds, bears, rhinos and elephants, monkeys, turtles and several species of deer, including an unknown species and many more. Findings of seeds, leaves and shells were also included. These are preserved inside the museum, which is divided into three main sections: the first focuses on explaining the processes of fossilization and the formation of Pietrafitta’s main fossil coal, lignite. The second section also employs thematic panels to describe the remains of non-mammalian vertebrates and mammals, all of which well exhibited. Finally, a very precious collection of Mammoths, the Mammuthus Meridionalis, which lived in the geological era of the Lower Pleistocene, wraps up a very interesting visit to the museum. This last exhibition is composed of 8 almost complete skeletons, which were left in the exact position in which they were lying when they were discovered, thanks to some special, innovative techniques.
Experts from all over the world have declared the finds kept in Piegaro to be of inestimable value.
Unfortunately, the museum is currently closed to the public, but measures are under way to ensure it is reopened as soon as possible.