Description of the attraction
By the decree of Empress Catherine II in 1773, the Mining Museum was established at the same time as the Mining School. Initially, three cabinets were combined: Metallic, Mining and Mineral. Within a few years, the museum was visited not only by teachers and students, but, as they said in those days, "curious visitors".
Currently, the museum is located in the main building of the Mining Institute and occupies twenty halls with a total exposition area of 2800 sq. M. The first section of the museum is devoted to geology and mineralogy, and also includes petrography, minerals and paleontology. The second section is devoted to the history of the development of mining technology and methods of mining. The third section is entirely devoted to the Mining Institute. The museum contains samples (about 230,000) from many states located on all continents, including Antarctica.
Acquaintance with the museum begins with an acquaintance with the building of the Mining Institute, which was built at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the famous architect A. N. Voronikhin. The building is decorated with sculptures by the famous sculptor V. I. Demut-Malinovsky (Abduction of Proserpine by Pluto) and the equally famous sculptor S. S. Pimenova (Struggle of Hercules with Antaeus).
A tour of the departments of the Mining Museum tells visitors about how the Mining Museum and Institute was created, gives an idea of how and in what conditions minerals are formed, how life developed on our planet, about what ores and rocks are part of the earth's crust … How, when, where and under what conditions exogenous and endogenous processes take place and what is it in general. Much attention in the museum's expositions is devoted to the history of mining technology and methods of industrial mining.
The expositions of the museum began with those samples of ores and minerals that were sent to the institute by ore and mining enterprises. The rich collection of meteorites usually arouses great attention and genuine interest among visitors. It contains nearly three hundred samples. One of them has a very interesting history and a big name. It is called Borodino. This meteorite fell to the ground in the night of 1812 on the eve of the historic battle, which is why it got its name. In 1890, it was presented to the museum by Herr Gerke, who was the heir to the one who saw his fall and then found the sentry.
Among the exhibits of the museum there is the world's largest solid lump of malachite. It was mined at the world-famous (thanks to the tales of Pavel Petrovich Bazhov) Gumeshevsky deposit in the Ural Mountains. Its weight is 1504 kg, it was donated to the museum by Empress Catherine II. Russian tsars have repeatedly presented the museum with rarities. It is worth noting the largest copper nugget, which resembled a bearskin in its outlines and got its name from this. The nugget was mined in Kazakhstan and weighs 842 kg. It was donated to the museum by Alexander II.
The exposition of the museum contains many models showing and telling about how the mining and processing of minerals was carried out and how it is now. In a specially equipped storehouse of the museum, precious metals are stored in nuggets and twenty products of K. Faberge himself.
An indescribable impression on visitors is made by an almost four-meter metal palm tree created by the famous Donbass master - blacksmith A. I. Mertsalov and his assistant F. F. Shkarin from a whole piece of rail. This palm tree won the Grand Prix at the Paris Industrial Exhibition in 1900.
The Zlatoust arms factory surprises everyone with its coat of arms of the Russian Empire, made of forks and knives in the shape of a two-headed eagle.
No one is left indifferent by the images on the so-called landscape stones: jasper, calcite, agate, rhodonite, aragonite. On them you can see the seashore, and a beautiful girl, and a winter fairy tale.
