The SZN and its relationship with Naples

The Darwin Dohrn Museum (DaDoM) celebrates the close relationship between Anton Dohrn and Charles Darwin. Dohrn founded the Zoological Station which today bears his name to "prove the veracity of Darwin's theory of evolution" through the study of marine life.
The close correspondence between Darwin and Dohrn testifies to Darwin's favor for Dohrn's initiative.
Anton Dohrn designed the Aquarium (recently refurbished) to show Neapolitans and visitors to the city the wonders of the marine life of the Gulf. The Zoological Station had and still has a purely scientific vocation, but Dohrn immediately understood the importance of public awareness of the importance of what we now call biodiversity.
For the Neapolitans, however, the Zoological Station is synonymous with the Aquarium, and the general public is not fully aware of the scientific activities that the researchers of the Station have been conducting for 150 years.

The Museum of Biodiversity and Evolution, a gift to Naples for the first 150 years of the SZN

The Darwin Dohrn Museum, built in the recently renovated Casina del Boschetto, aims to open the research world of the Zoological Station to Neapolitans and visitors to the city. The Museum is conceived as a "long discourse" that illustrates the main concepts that allow us to understand the evolution, from the origin of life to today. Life was born in the sea and the DaDoM, in the tradition of the Zoological Station, is focused on the marine environment also because the oceans cover 71% of the planet's surface and their volume represents more than 90% of the habitable space of life.

Darwin-Dohrn and the Neapolitan urchin Salvatore Lo Bianco (Turillo)
With natural selection Darwin also founded ecology. The Museum, therefore, brings together evolution and ecology. The concepts are illustrated by artists who have created works expressly for the Museum. The collection of the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Station is exhibited, on which the great Salvatore Lo Bianco worked. And his workshop is reconstructed and shown alongside his works, true masterpieces of the art of conservation.

The sea for the life of the Planet

The functioning of marine ecosystems is based on microscopic beings that "hold" with their activities the "weight" of organisms that are familiar to us. Explaining how the sea is made and how it works is one of the DaDoM missions, together with the illustration of the evolutionary relationships that unite all living beings in a single large "tree", which developed largely in the sea.

The Exhibition of Scientific Culture
The large multipurpose room is the heart of DaDoM. In it conferences are held, films are shown, thematic exhibitions are set up on specific topics and workshops by scientists and students. It is here that the researchers of the Aquarium and the Zoological Station will tell their discoveries, their work. Visiting researchers will speak with them, including Nobel Laureates who often visit the facility. The Zoological Station has a very strong international vocation and will offer it to the city.

A gift to the new generations

The Darwin Dohrn Museum, the Aquarium, the Turtle Center of Portici and the Observatory of the Gulf of Naples are the communication hub that connects the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station with the general public. The Dohrn Foundation collaborates with the Zoological Station to ensure their proper functioning, keeping the project of Anton Dohrn and his family alive, disseminating the results of the scientific research conducted at the Zoological Station and conducting environmental awareness actions aimed at protecting biodiversity and functioning of marine ecosystems.