The public mission of the Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History is to study bio-diversity, starting with its own collections, and to transfer specific knowledge to the public, aiming towards its education as well as its entertainment. The Museum’s target is to circulate information regarding both Romanian and worldwide fauna, and to turn the attention of a large audience towards contemporary issues related to the protection of natural environments and conservation of various habitats.
The Grigore Antipa Museum originates in t ...
Read morehe National Museum of Natural History and Antiques, initiated in 1834. The present-day edifice housing the museum collections was designed and had built in 1914 by Grigore Antipa, a well known scientist, the inventor of the dioramas. The building is the first designed as a museum in the Old Romanian Kingdom, and it has been very modern in what concerned its role, facilities, and exhibition concepts as well. Ever since the opening, one can marvel at the first bio-geographical dioramas in the world: the Sahara desert, the African savanna, the American prairie and the Siberian tundra. These dioramas were taken as models by similar institution in the world, including prestigious ones in Paris, Berlin, Sankt Petersburg. Even today, at the American Natural History Museum in New York one can see augmented replicas of some of the dioramas from the Grigore Antipa museum.
Today the heritage counts more than 1.300.000 specimens grouped in 130 collections of the majority of the animal species. The following broad scientific collections are present: minerals and rocks; fossils; invertebrates; insects; fish; amphibians and reptiles; mammals; compared anatomy; ethnography and anthropology. The value of the collection is increased by more than 5,000 specimens, describing totally new species, some of them unique in the world.
