The University of Catania (UniCT) was founded in 1434, and it is the oldest university in Sicily (Italy). UniCT has 17 departments plus 2 special didactic units in the decentralized offices of Ragusa and Syracuse, the “Scuola Superiore di Catania”, which is a higher education center for brilliant minds, and 29 research centers that cover any kind of scientific and social area.

The UniCT Museum Network (SiMuA) brings together University Museums, Archives and Collections in order to maintain and enhance these resources, and to make available their historical, artistic, archaeological, naturalist and scientific goods to the civil community. The SiMuA comprises three ecomuseums, preserving valuable scientific goods of heritage sites, the Botanical Garden (with the herbarium and the germplasm bank), the Museum of Representation (housing projects and drawings by famous Italian architects), the Earth Sciences Museum, the Museum of Zoology, the “Lorenzo Bianchi” Museum of Human Anatomy, the Collections of Agro-biodiversity and Entomology, the Collection of Ancient Instruments of Physics, and the “City of Science”. The Benedictine Museum (a UNESCO world heritage site), the Archeology Museum with the Archive of Ceramographies, the Historical Archive of the University, the Microfilm Collection of Medieval Juridical Manuscripts, and the Museum of Sicilian Knowledge and Mirabilia are the pivot of human sciences. Within the SiMuA, University teaching and research activities are carried out, as well as numerous initiatives to bring the University closer to the society with modern and inclusive methods.

In this context, the “City of Science” of UniCT is a science center where games and experiments, realized in collaboration with the university departments, stimulate the visitor’s curiosity on the infinite issues concerning nature and technology. A raised gallery, housing samples of the historical and scientific collections of the University of Catania, represents a link between traditional science museums and new-generation museums. An interdisciplinary approach regulates the choice of various subjects, which are updated periodically: the basic principles of scientific disciplines – from the universal language of mathematics to the physics applied to natural phenomena, from chemical to biological evolution, going deep into the world of IT and robotics. The structure offers a variety of opportunities: conferences, seminars and debates of social interests, exhibitions and events on science and technology (http://www.cds.unict.it/notizie), all based on a comparison between science and society.

Last, but not least, UniCT is highly committed to promoting scientific culture via its multimedia channels (zammùmultimedia), and the Office for Communication and International Relations.