Casa delle Farfalle (Butterfly House), Milano Marittima

The Casa delle Farfalle was created in 2002 through a partnership between the town of Cervia, the Province of Ravenna and the Emilia-Romagna Region. Owned by the municipality and built with regional support, it follows a scheme by the designer Ugo Li Puma (Lipuma in Italian Wikipedia), dedicated to the memory of his grandson Matteo. Sources differ on the opening date: 2002 according to the encyclopedia and the park's own website, July 2003 according to Cervia's tourist office. It is run by Atlantide, a Cervia cooperative for environmental studies and services, which uses it for education programmes on butterflies and insects; the site belongs to the AmaParco network of theme parks in Emilia-Romagna.

The centre grew in stages. In 2005 new fish species were added to the small lake inside the greenhouse, and a botanical trail of plants from the local pinewood was laid out outside. In 2006 the Casa degli Insetti opened, a pavilion devoted to insects and other invertebrates and named after Matteo Li Puma. The Il Bruco greenhouse for Italian and local butterflies followed in 2013, and an open-air butterfly garden in 2019. The centre marked its twentieth anniversary in 2022 and reports more than 500,000 visitors since it opened; a new educational trail about the decline of bumblebees was launched in 2024.

The site is organised around two main pavilions. The first is the tropical greenhouse, which covers more than 500 m² and is mapped as a greenhouse building in OpenStreetMap, east of the ticket office. Fully climate-controlled, it recreates the conditions of a rainforest, with temperatures between 28 and 30 °C and humidity of about 65 to 70 per cent. Inside, the layout centres on a small lake overlooked by two footbridges, with rearing areas where chrysalises turn into butterflies, a 'nocturnal' corner where some species gather, a wall of giant moths and artificial flower-shaped feeders known as the butterfly bar.

The second pavilion, the Casa degli Insetti, is a multi-purpose building with a permanent exhibition on insects and invertebrates, an equipped classroom and a shop. The smaller Il Bruco greenhouse, also climate-controlled, was developed with the University of Bologna to raise local butterflies. The sources consulted do not describe the materials or frame of the main greenhouse.

The main greenhouse holds several hundred tropical butterflies from South-East Asia, South America, Africa and Australia. Hundreds of chrysalises find the conditions they need to develop, so every stage of metamorphosis can be followed, from egg to caterpillar and from pupa to butterfly. The planting includes exotic species such as ficus, banana plants and carnivorous plants. Koi carp, goldfish and mosquitofish swim in the lake, and the greenhouse is also home to chameleons, iguanas and small birds.

The Casa degli Insetti shows bees, bumblebees, ants, ladybirds, locusts, stick insects, mantises and beetles, with a large ant colony and a working beehive. Outside, a botanical trail presents pinewood plants such as elder, butcher's broom and reeds through their mythology. The Il Bruco greenhouse raises local butterflies for release outdoors, as part of a reintroduction project run with the University of Bologna.

The centre stands in the pinewood of Milano Marittima, within the Po Delta Park, and opens only in season, from spring to early autumn. The route takes in the tropical greenhouse, the insect house, the small Italian butterfly house and the butterfly garden, with its insect hotel, botanical paths and patches left to grow wild. Events mark the season, such as the twentieth-anniversary celebration in May 2022 or the Miele degli Angeli charity evening, held in August in aid of a brain-tumour association.

A visit pairs well with the Cervia salt pans and their visitor centre, and with the town's nature park, which reopen at the same time of year.