The great scientific importance of historical collections is a well-established fact. On the contrary, their value as vehicles to promote public awareness and effective conservation projects in some of the most valuable biodiversity hotspots in the tropics appear to have been greatly overlooked by Natural History Museums and similar institutions. Utilising the vertebrate collections of Italian institutions as a case study, the great potential of these medium-sized museums to popularising and promoting biodiversity in some of the most valuable regions of the world, utilising the history of their collections and of the men which collected and studied them, is emphasised.