The history of the Geological Collections of the Ennio Quirino Visconti Public High School at the Collegio Romano (Rome): from Athanasius Kircher to nowadays

The Ennio Quirino Visconti public High School for Humanities of Rome, founded in 1870 shortly after the proclamation of the Unification of Italy, preserves precious evidence of scientific and cultural heritage, still poorly known to the public. These are a series of scientific collections of relevant naturalistic, historical, and educational values. The school inherited them from the 17th-century Jesuit Museum of the Collegio Romano, which had its headquarters in this building. Since 1870, the school put significant effort to enrich this heritage, thanks to the contribution and care of a few teachers who managed the Natural History Cabinet in the school between the end of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century. Among them Professor Antonio Neviani, a geologist, turned out to be the strongest supporter of teaching and disseminating scientific subjects using naturalistic collections. Among the collections, several geological ones include thousands of mineralogical, petrographic, and palaeontological specimens, as well as a few sets of models of crystallographic growth and plan-reliefs of the Italian territory. These materials were used in the past as valid teaching tools, but since the end of the Second World War were set aside in the attics of the high school and mostly forgotten. In 2015, a revaluation of the 17thcentury scientific materials began with the creation of the Wunder Musaeum, a new exhibition area, built inside the Great Hall of the Institute. Since 2017, some professors at the school and geologists of the Department of Science of the Roma Tre University have been developing the “GeoMuseum Project”, focusing on a new phase of scientific classification, restoration, exhibition and dissemination of the geological collections from Jesuits to the 20th century. This work presents for the first time the recent reorganisation of geological collections that are relevant for their scientific and historical value, tracing the history of the Collegio Romano, first, and the Ennio Quirino Visconti High School, then. This review intends to provide expert and non-expert audience with an exceptional historical example of a geological museum, as a tool to teach and disseminate Geosciences through centuries.