According to the documents kept here, this must be the oldest institution of it's kind in Romania, as the very first collections were put together as early as 1720, although the actual museum will open only in 1796. We are lucky to have a manuscript from those times, the "Catalogus Raritatum et Benefactorum", which details the various pieces in the collections. From the start, it was bound to be a natural science museum but also a place for rare artefacts and objects. The main organiser and curator of the museum at the end of the 18th century was Franciscus Benko, a respected scientist.
Over the next two and a half centuries several curators, scientist, collectors and naturalists worked for the museum and tried to enrich and catalogue it's collections, from plants gathered from all around the world to birds, mammals, rocks, cristals, fossils, fish, reptiles and so on. In 1951, when the range and variety of the collections were already far more than impressive, the museum became a state museum and all the pieces were reorganised. Trying to offer visitors not only exhibitions and data about tha faboulous world of natural science, the museum in Aiud also became a cultural institution, which offered learning programs, conferences, studies.
Apart from the items collected from Romania or Europe, the museum also features some rare examples from Africa, America, Austria, New Zeeland, Brasil, New Guinea and so on, mainly donations. There are over 35.000 exhibits in the storage of the museum, most of the best being displayed in the four halls, each dedicated to a specific genre, in cronological order, from the very simple and fascinating creatures to much more advanced mammals and the likes. Most of the exhibits are animals, but you can also find a great number of fossils, plants, minerals, rocks and so on.
It is surely one of the largest museums of natural science in the country, worthy to be compared to the famous Antipa Museum in Bucharest, providing visitors of all ages a chance of understanding and learning how this fascinating world really works.
2008-04-10
