The Mineralogy Museum

The Museum of Mineralogy comprises two exhibit halls : the bigger one displays a collection of the finest quality. About 240 minerals are classified by structure and chemical composition. The minerals, collected for the past 100 years, come from all parts of the world (1,050 specimens on display). The smaller room is reserved for the local minerals of the Rhine valley (the Palatinate,the Black Forest, the Vosges Mountains and the Swiss Alps). The collections include incredibly beautiful amethyst geodes from Idar-Oberstein (Palatinate), native silver, proustite and rare arsenate minerals from Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines (Haut-Rhin), fluorites, among which one of the biggest ones ever found in the Kinzig Valley (the Black Forest) and minerals from the famous Binn deposit (Valais). A collection of minerals from the Vosges Mountains, of fascinating samples of meteorites as well as a set of very beautiful ancient instruments used in mineralogy and crystallography are also on display. The Museum is one of the most important museums of mineralogy in the provinces for the wealth of its collections (30,000 minerals). Set up in 1890 on the premises of the Institute of the Sciences of the Earth, it was designed to promote scientific research and train mineralogists.