Today I'm going to showcase my new favourite culture spot. While Googling something unrelated, I stumbled across an article on a little-known museum. Interest piqued, I put the museum on my immediate must-see list. And, like the author of the article, I was absolutely blown away.
El Museo Geominero (the Geomining Museum), which might just be Madrid's best-kept secret, was created in 1849 at the request of Queen Isabel II (r. 1833-1868). Today, the museum is home to an impressive collection of 3,500 minerals and 6,000 fossils. Construction of the equally noteworthy building in which the collection is currently housed began in 1921 and was completed in the 1940s after WWII.
Located on Calle de Ríos Rosas, 23 (Metro: Ríos Rosas, L1), the museum is open Mon-Sun 09:00-14:00. Entry is free, although you do need to bring photo ID, which will be scrutinised and added onto the system.
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| The stained glass window in the first-floor lobby |
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| The beautiful stained glass ceiling |
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| The exhibition room from the ground floor |
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| Just some of the 6,000 fossils in the museum's collection |
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| A solitary trilobyte |
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| More fossils |
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| A gastropod |
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| Samples of quartz |
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| A geologist in the making |
The museum would obviously be of most interest to geology fans, such as the young girl in the photo above. She could not have been more than about six years old and she was carefully copying down the details of the crystals she was looking at!
You don't have to be a geology fan, however, to appreciate this museum. The bright, spacious exhibition room with its open galleries will appeal to most people. And once you've seen everything you want to see, you can sit on the comfortable red velvet-covered seats on the ground floor and just while away the time in beautiful surroundings...
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| View of the second, third and (out-of-bounds) fourth floors |
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| Looking down from the third floor |
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| The marble staircase leading towards the main door |
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