The history of the museum
The history of our phantasmagorical museum.
Why is it called Cava "Bomba"?
The quarry called Bomba is open on the southern flank of Monte Cinto at an altitude of arounf 30 m from the countryside. The toponym Bomba refers to a small settlement with a tavern in the valley intersection of the quarry, that already appears in a paper of the 1620 and it is present in the Austrian real estate registry of the 1831. The scholars of etymology believe that the meaning of the term is of dialectal origin, of uncertain etymon, that is “inzuppato, fradicio”, due to the presence in the site of a source once of significant importance, currently almost completely buried. At the end of the last world war, an aerial bombardment in this place caused the death of three young people. Therefore it is quite common in the town the wrong belief that the name Bomba is assosiated with the tragic war event.
Who discovered the fossil fish at Cava Bomba?
In the 1974 three friends passionate fossil researchers, the painter and the naturalist from Este Delmo Veronese, the craftsman-artist of the wood of Cinto Euganeo Luigi Ravarotto and the at that time university student Franco Colombara, started a research campaign of fossils in the quarry, which also involved researchers and experts of fossil fish like Massimiliano Cerato and Lorenzo Sorbini. Already before, Luigi Ravarotto had found interesting fossils that can be reported to fishes and many yellow and shining mineral concretions of pyrite in front of a serie of dark clay marly layers brougth to light by the excavation work for the extraction of the limestone. These layers, which formed the fossil site, were interspersed to the calcareous stratifications of the Upper Cretaceous.
The origins of the Museum
Stopped the mining and finished the fossil researches, the at that time Consortium for the Enhancement of the Euganean Hills implemented an examplary environmental reorganization in the quarry and obtained by donation from Cementi Zillo, owner of the complex production, the entire area, including real estates. It followed the conservative restoration of the industrial complex intended to safeguard as much as possible the particular structures - furnace vents, inspection hatches, mezzanines, oil mills etc. - for a complete testimony of the production cycle. To complete of the path of industrial archaeology there is a section of the Decauville railway that, starting from the furnace vents, articulates towards the front quarry. On its tracks, in the past, they were pushed by hand the carts that unloaded the stones and the coal into the vents of the ovens. The complex also included three places of a certain size, originally warehouses and other small places of service. Seen the fossils rediscovered on site e those found in euganean area, the idea to valorize at the most the structure exposing the heritage rediscovered in the spaces of the production complex, became exhibitions.