Underground Secrets – Minerals, Rocks and Gemstones

We invite you to a field trip through space, time, and imagination! Enter our exhibition and take a look at our display cases featuring about 2.000 specimens. You can glance at intriguing minerals such as those that make up your common household items, and those that make up the moon, all for the price of a museum ticket. However, if these past 470 million years were not enough, you could see a 3-billion-year-old piece of the oldest part of the Earth's cortex, and finally, if you are in the mood for time travel, you can examine some extraterrestrial “guests”, our more than 4.5-billion-year old meteorites, which are as old as the Solar System.
Those with an eye for small things can look at our specimen in the range of a few millimetres , which contains zircon crystals aged more than 3 billion years. Those who prefer to gaze at something much larger are welcomed to do so by “Grandpa”, the smoky quartz crystal weighing 136.5 kg. The natural beauty of several minerals and the charm of cut gemstones await those looking for aesthetic pleasures, from the “common” tumbled stones to the replica of the most beautiful diamond of the British Crown Jewels. Those interested in our past can peek at the sometimes-troubled history of our museum through selected specimens from our 200 years old collection.