Ornithological Museum
Housed in the town's ancient 16th-century church, the former church of San Francesco, is the Ornithological Museum of San Gimignano, which features a rich and varied collection of birds from various parts of Italy and Europe. Belonging to Marquise Marianna Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona Paolucci, a famous Florentine malacologist and great ornithology enthusiast, the collection was a gift that the marquise made to the Municipality of San Gimignano in 1927. The original collection numbered 1260 specimens; as of today, the museum exhibits about 370 bird specimens, 696 belonging to 253 different species, including rare or endangered ones, previously kept in the Villa del Monte estate, a historic building in the town. The exhibit curated by the Department of Environmental Biology of the University of Siena and the National Institute of Game Biology allows visitors to perfectly empathize with the "surrounding" fauna.