Francesco Garnier Valletti Fruit Museum

The Fruit Museum displays the collection of plastic artificial fruits, moulded in the second half of the 19th century by Francesco Garnier Valletti (Giaveno, 1808 – Turin, 1889), a brilliant and eccentric craftsman, artist and scientist.

The Museum offers a comparison of the varieties of fruit grown at the end of the 19th century, as perfectly documented by Garnier Valletti, to those nowadays on the market.

This enables a deeper understanding on the evolution of:

• applied farming research in Turin between the 19th and 20th centuries;
• the connection between science and agriculture in the last century;
• fruit and vegetable production and consumption over time;
• research in horticulture, fruit growing and the preservation of agricultural products over time;
• biodiversity from the 19th century to the present day.

The museum is housed in the Anatomical Institute Building, together with the Luigi Rolando Museum of Human Anatomy and the Cesare Lombroso Museum of Criminal Anthropology.

The museum provides an articulate and complex overview of scientific positivism, which had a propulsive centre in Turin on a national scale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The pomology collection is made up of over 1,000 specimens of pears, apples, peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, and grapes.

The fruits are displayed in the original furniture in which they were placed in 1928.

The collection is owned by the Operations Section of the Experimental Institute for Plant Nutrition of Turin.

The Museum provides:

• guided tours;
• educational activities for students of all levels;
• cultural promotions and initiatives organised by the University and the Italian Ministry of Culture.