The museum
To learn how our environment has changed since the beginning of history to our present times means understanding a journey of over 200,000 years, which involves the joint evolution of humanity’s technological skills and its relationship with nature and the landscape.
This is one of the strongest and most innovative conceptual focuses of MUSE. The exhibition floor dedicated to Prehistory with its succession of themes and experiences that are totally new to the international museum scene, presents a refreshingly simple and direct viewpoint. Today’s society is the result of a course of techniques and of a network of territories. As the techniques multiplied, the presence of mankind changed.
From the industrial revolution onwards, technological progress has increasingly impacted on the environment; here in the 21st century we now understand its true implications for Earth’s fragile ‘planetary limits’, such as biodiversity loss, the advance of desertification, climate change and the global increase in extreme weather events. Consequently, the forecast scenarios and the development programs promoted by the European Union within the framework of the Europe 2020 program have identified three main axes, i.e. and society, along which to build the idea of the future of our continent. This is why MUSE has elected as primary feature of its philosophy the dialectic and constructive relationship between development and environmental sustainability and the relationship with the role played by our contemporary society.
Knowledge, logic, and awareness: these should be key attitudes of the model contemporary citizen. And yet it is not enough. Today citizens are called to take up a position and to act accordingly in order to address and solve these globally important problems. 

This entails a space dedicated to civil defence, understood as the capacity to intervene and prevent environmental risk. Visitors will discover a unitary path of techniques and transformations of the land that leads from Alpine Prehistory to the limits of planetary sustainability consisting of population growth, loss of biodiversity and climate change. And will discover that our future depends on how we will interact with scientific knowledge and with technology to ensure smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

The museum’s quest for a new role translated into the creation and production of a large number of highly acclaimed temporary exhibitions. The nature-oriented themes were joined by new programs extended to energy and sustainable development, interactive science games, astronomy and mathematics. A rich program of educational activities, aimed beyond solely naturalistic disciplines, was also created.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the Autonomous Province of Trento identified the Tridentine Museum of Natural Sciences as the perfect vehicle for adding culture to the project of reclamation of the abandoned industrial area formerly occupied by the Michelin factory. This area had found itself encompassed by the spread of the city borders and had thus become the subject (since 2001) of a plan for its change in urban purpose.
 
Maxi Ooh!
is an area exclusively reserved for the youngest visitors (aged 0 - 5) who, together with their parents, can touch, see and hear via real and virtual sensorial stimuli: an area where the thrill of discovery starts with the senses.
The main architectural elements of the Maxi Ooh! Area are three large coloured bubbles that seem to fluctuate inside the glass-paneled room. This is a place where children and adults can dive into sounds, where they can colour spaces with their presence and where they can discover, be stimulated and hear with their ears and with their whole body, where they can draw with their voice as well as with their hands. It is an oasis where they can relax and live a new way of visiting a museum. Maxi Ooh! focuses on creativity and the adult/child relationship in the quest for a free and subjective exploration of the world, and for the development of knowledge.
Relaxation area
This area is dedicated to relaxation and to meeting the primary needs of small children (nursing, rest, snacks).
The science gymnasium
Beyond the “Big Void”, southwards, is the “Hands-on” area dedicated to the interaction between visitors and scientific equipment and experiments. Here visitors will find a set of suspended objects and machines that faithfully reproduce physical phenomena.
Science on a sphere
This is the first example of this kind of installation in Italy. The sphere is the beating heart of the area dedicated to sustainability. The great suspended globe illustrates the complex environmental processes in an intuitive and viewer-friendly way. The video projections depicting the atmospheric and oceanic dynamics in real time lead the visitor on a trip into environmental sciences and forecasting the weather of the future.
In my opinion Next to the sustainability gallery is an area for exchange and discussion, for informal presentations and debates.
Regular programs alternate with temporary exhibitions.
Two interactive tables favour the exchange of ideas among visitors in order to boost and encourage their participation in political choices affecting scientific issues.
 
The tropical greenhouse is a vital part of the museum project. It is a veritable “hothouse” designed to grow and conserve a rainforest. It survives thanks to complex functional dynamics and requires specifi c temperature and humidity settings to keep its insects, plants and animals alive.
This area is an interpretation of planetary biodiversity within a global context of sustainability. It is a fragile environment, constantly at risk and threatened, and is a paradigm of the need to fi nd alternative methods for development. The greenhouse idea is founded on the research activities the museum has been conducting in the last decade on the Eastern Arc mountains in Tanzania, aimed at the conservation of the natural environment with the active participation of local communities.
 
MUSE - Museo delle Scienze di Trento
Corso del Lavoro e della Scienza 3
I-38123 Trento
+39 0461 270311
www.muse.it