Naturhistorisk Museum is the university-managed natural history museum in Denmark's second largest city, Aarhus. It's one of the largest museums of its kind in the country, possibly the second-biggest after the zoological museum in Copenhagen.
The museum doesn't currently display any living animals (though they do keep corn snakes, cane toads and tarantulas behind the scenes to educate visiting schools, and from time to time they keep native animals in temporary exhibitions), but has a lot of taxidermied animals and focuses more on zoology than other aspects of natural history.
The museum consists of six exhibitions on five floors:
- Africa's savanna (basement): The oldest exhibition with two dioramas with African animals (that the museum staff personally shot and taxidermied in the 1940's) and some information boards on African wildlife.
- The Denmark hall (basement): The second-oldest exhibition, focusing on Danish flora and fauna (mostly fauna). While it's a nice enough exhibition, it's a bit outdated (for example, it mentions the gray wolf as an animal that doesn't live in Denmark anymore).
- AnimaliA (first floor): 29 animals, one for each letter from A to Å, have been displayed, and information boards explain how these animals survive in nature (or didn't survive, in case of the passenger pigeon).
- Frihedens værksted (second floor): Translating into "the workshop of freedom", this temporary exhibition chronicles the life of the Danish explorer Troels Kløvedal. I'm not sure if anyone from outside of Denmark knows who he is, but he's very well-known among Danish people, and the exhibition has made the museum a huge drawcard.
- Den globale baghave (third floor): Translating into "the global backyard", this exhibition is an attempt to modernize the display of the museum's taxidermied animals, most of which were displayed in old, boring and dusty glass cases.
- Én mands passion (fourth floor): Translating into "one man's passion", this temporary exhibition consists of an extremely comprehensive collection of bird skulls donated to the museum by one man who collected them through 50 years.
