The Museum of the Industrial Heritage premises are in the northern outskirts of Bologna, in a former kiln along the Navile, the ancient navigable channel of the city. The kiln, built in 1887 with a non-stop cycle Hoffmann oven, produced bricks, Marseille roof tiles and fired bricks working the top-quality clay present in the area. At the end of the century the expansion of the Galotti's Company brought to the construction of another Hoffmann oven of which some traces still remain on the ground in the inside courtyard. After a period of abandon following closing-down in 1966, the building was bought by the Municipality of Bologna and restored between 1984 and 1990. The Kiln was completely restored and furnished in order to host the Museum and other activities and institutions.  On the ground floor - the Hoffmann oven, the heart of the production for brick firing, presents, in its external portico, a documentation related to the history of the former kiln and to brick manufacturing cycle and the packaging section of Bologna. Inside the kiln, you can visit the area: 'Learning How to Design and Build Machines', with the history of technical education and technological progress of Bologna between 1800s and 1900s. On the first floor - The "From Excellence to Future" hall, was realized to explain the link/connection between the development of technology, innovation and the economic and productive area of Bologna The hall is divided into three areas: "Inside the Economy of Bologna", "The Senses of Machines", "The Rooms of Excellence", and it contains all the new information, studies and researches about the economy of Bologna and of the global market system. Examples, exhibits and filmed sequences will explain the last applications of technological researches. Moreover, here you can find the teaching laboratories for schools, divided into sections with specific tools for experiences, experiments and observations of scientific issues such as the energy sources (water, vapour, electricity), the chemical structure and composition of some elements (water and air), the Sun System and the silk production process.
From 12 October 2013 Museum of the Industrial Heritage has a new section dedicated to astronomy.   The  careful and spectacular setting up of “L'Officina delle Stelle” will enable visitors to look out onto the Universe through the huge window of a diorama representing the Solar System. On show precious 'telluri' for educational purposes too, made by  Sebastiano Zavaglia in 1854-55.

 On the second floor - the exhibition reconstructs the profile of the city's long industrial history through a series of thematic cores: - Bologna of silk and water in the XV-XVIII centuries, when the city was the world leader of the silk production thanks to the hydraulic energy (artificial hydraulic system) and the high technology of the Bologna silk mills. Relieves, large machinery models (silk mill), video and interactive structures, a multivision for slides reconstruct the productive organization of the XV-XVIII centuries; - Bologna of the mechanical culture of the beginning of the Twentieth century, diffused in little workshops and sustained by technical competences of professional quality ; - the productive sectors of the modern industrial district like the motor design and manufacture, the Biomedical sector and above all the sector of automated packaging machines manufacturers, represented through restored real machinery, biographies of companies, technicians, planners, oral witnessing of the protagonists, social and economic documentation of the development model realized.