The Costa collection was created from scratch by A. Costa, Director of the Museum from 1860 to 1898, with numerous field trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. The Collection currently boasts over 30.000 specimens of the initial 100,000 insects, important for their historical-faunal and systematic data. The collection was divided into three parts: the extra-European collection, the European collection and the collection from southern Italy and the islands. Special attention was paid to Sardinia, whose material was personally collected by Costa. The entomological collection of southern and insular Italy was part of a larger collection including all the fauna of the Neapolitan area called the Special Collection of the Province and the Gulf of Naples which was the first scientific collection of all the taxa of that area. The collection is of exceptional and unique importance due to the presence of the types of the species described by Costa. The collection, for obvious conservation reasons, is not exposed to the public.
Photo: African giant beetle, Petrognatha gigas (Fabricius, 1793).