Natural History Museum

The natural history museum was founded in 1849, at the initiative of the Natural Sciences Transylvanian Society, society constituted with the purpose of spreading its discoveries to the community and educating the younger generation about the knowledge and preservation of nature.

The headquarters of the Natural Sciences Transylvanian Society was built according to the project of the Architect C.W. Friedrich Maetz of Cluj, the festive inauguration taking place on May 25th, 1895. The building was built in the late Italian Renaissance style, having three stories (underground, ground floor and first floor).

The collections of the museum integrate approximately 1.100.000 pieces from different domains such as geology, palaeontology, botany and zoology. We can see here: the herbarium of J. Lerchenfeld (17th century); the herbarium of M. Fuss (1834-1882); the ornithological collection of F. W. Stetter (1853), including indigenous and exotic birds; the ethnographic collection of Palestine, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia of the vice-consul Franz Binder; the Ackner minerals collection; the entomological collection of Dr. Eugen Worell (1957), including insects from Europe, Africa, America and Asia; the butterflies collection of Weindel (1965); the insects collection of H. Hannenheim (1964); the Breckner paleontological collection (1955), mainly including shark teeth of the tertiary collected from Porceşti region (Turnu Roşu); the Nyárádi botany collection (1980); the mineral collection of Dr. E. Bielz (1953); Kimakowicz malacology collection.

Since December 21st, 2007, the Natural History Museum of Sibiu displays the most modern natural history exhibition of Romania, the new configuration conferring a special importance to the diorama exhibition, the pieces being displayed in order to reproduce the habitat of each animal within an ecosystem.

The garden was set up as a relaxation area for the visitors, but also as an area where one can see common and rare species of plants, such as trees and ornamental scrubs.