Description of the attraction
The Royal Ontario Museum is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario. This is one of the largest museums in North America, as well as one of the most popular and interesting museums not only in Canada, but throughout the world, attracting more than 1 million visitors annually.
The museum was officially founded in April 1912 and almost two years later it solemnly opened its doors to the public. The collection of the Royal Museum is based on the impressive collection of its predecessor, the Museum of Natural History and Fine Arts of the Toronto College of Education. Until 1968, the museum was administered by the University of Toronto, after which it became an independent administrative unit.
The famous collection of the Royal Ontario Museum has over 6 million items. Collections illustrating the natural history of the Earth introduce visitors in detail to endangered and recently extinct species, with particular emphasis on the causes (destruction of habitats, climate change, etc.) and the need to protect the environment. Shown here are the remains of dinosaurs (including the skeletons of a barosaur and parasaurolophus), birds, reptiles and mammals of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and the Cenozoic era. It is also worth noting that the museum also owns the world's largest collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale (Berge shale in Yoho National Park), the total number of which exceeds 150,000. An impressive collection of about 3000 samples of minerals, meteorites, precious stones and rocks, including the famous cerussite - "Desert Light" and the Tagish meteorite, deserves special attention.
Galleries of world culture acquaint museum guests with art objects from East Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as with the history of the development of the culture of Canada and Europe, from the prehistoric period to the present day. At the Royal Ontario Museum, you can admire beautiful wall paintings from a Chinese temple from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and wood sculptures of bodhisattvas (12-15th century). There is also one of the famous Yixian glazed ceramic sculptures of the Liao Dynasty period (907-1125). No less interesting are the Egyptian sarcophagus with the mummy "Djedmaatesankh" from Luxor, the bust of Cleopatra VII Philopator, the statue of the goddess Sekhmet, the book of the dead from the tomb of Amenemhat, the sculpture by the Mumbai artist Navjot Alfat "The Blue Lady", as well as the tomb of General Zu Dashou (also known as " Ming Tomb ") and the armor of the Earl of Pembroke William Herbert.
In addition to the permanent exhibition, the Royal Ontario Museum hosts various temporary exhibitions on a regular basis. The museum is engaged in research activities.
