The Geological Museum of the Dolomites was opened in Predazzo in 1899 with the aim of enhancing the local geological and naturalistic heritage. Since 2012 it has been the territorial headquarters of the MUSE (Trento Science Museum), while in 2015, following a major renovation, it reopened with a new layout with a modern and interactive approach through which it now tells the story of the Dolomites of Fiemme and Fassa and their millenary relationship with the local populations, representing a central junction in the reflection on the theme Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
But why a Geological Museum in Predazzo of all places?
The territories of Fiemme and Fassa have always been known for their wealth of rocks and minerals, and because of this, have long been frequented by scholars from all over Europe.
“This is the key to the Alps…home to the most varied and wonderful geological phenomena.” wrote Leopold von Buch, one of the scholars who devoted themselves to exploration and research in our Valleys since the early 19th century. But it was not he who turned the spotlight on Predazzo. Instead, it was the sensational discovery made by Count Giuseppe Marzari Pencati of Vicenza, an adviser to the mines of the Imperial Royal Government of the Venetian provinces, that contributed to transforming this small town off the main roads into a worldwide destination for scholars of various disciplines.
Around 1819 Pencati climbed an area of Mount Pelenzana arriving in the Canzoccoli area, a locality west of Predazzo; here he discovered, to his surprise, that the limestone was covered with granite.
Pencati’s discovery, published in 1820 in an article in the “Nuovo Osservatore Veneziano,” created enormous stir even outside of academia.
In fact, at that time two theories, the “Neptunistic” and the “Plutonistic” theories, were opposed around the origin of rocks. Proponents of the former believed that all rocks were formed one after another from an extensive primordial ocean and static stratification in which rocks were formed from lava granite, on top of which mineral and living forms settled, which, over millennia, became limestone rocks. A creationist view, strongly influenced by the Bible, which supported the centrality of man in the universe and the earth in the solar system.
The “plutonist” school (from Pluto, the god of the underworld), on the other hand, supported the idea of continuous movement below the earth’s crust where granites were the product of molten masses from the bowels of the earth and solidified once they rose to the surface.
If Pencati’s observations proved accurate, the proponents of Plutonism would have been right. In this climate of great cultural ferment, on September 30, 1822, the Prussian king’s chamberlain and naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, announced his arrival in Predazzo to personally view the discovery.
After him, Leopold von Buch, the leading geologist of the time, also traveled by carriage from Saxony, twice in two years in search of an alternative explanation for Pencati’s observations. Von Buch studied the minerals for which the area had meanwhile become famous, and discovered limestone in the vicinity of granite and monzonite.
In the years to come many other important scholars from all over Europe visited the Canzoccoli: Cordier, Richthoffen, Murchison, Studer, Maraschini. Their signatures, along with those of artists, mountaineers, and travelers, are recorded in the guest books (“the Memorial” – preserved right inside the Museum) of the famous Hotel Nave d’Oro, an old building that once dominated the Piazza of Predazzo, and was used as a hotel towards the end of the eighteenth century. .
Pencati’s sensational discovery thus found international confirmation, laying the foundations of modern geology and in fact transforming Predazzo into a destination of international appeal. In fact, rocks, minerals and fossils never seen before were discovered here to which local place names were often given: Monzonite, Fassanite, Predazzite.
