In 1907 a sculpture of a mammoth was erected in the Parc de la Ciutadella. It was the first, and the most picturesque, element of an ambitious agenda that envisaged to transform the Parc into a space for civic science around 1900. The Parc was aimed at scientific instruction but also the moral elevation of the public. Several institutions (a natural history museum, a zoo, a greenhouse for exotic plants, an aquarium), monuments (the mammoth) and events (exhibitions on sericulture and on pisciculture) were carried out with that purpose. The aim of this article is to reconstruct the ensemble of initiatives and to narrate the institutional history of the Parc by exposing the ideologies that shaped it.

Peer reviewed