The Museo Istituto Minerario (Mining Institute Museum) includes two museums: the Museo dell’Arte Mineraria (Mining Art Museum) and the Museo di Mineralogia (Mineralogy Museum).
In 1998, some “mining men” created the Museo dell’Arte Mineraria. The aim was to preserve and show many of the things that allowed the miner to dominate the rock and, by studying and creating new equipment, become the architect of a mining culture that for centuries has been the center of social and economic life in large parts of our island and not only.
In this museum, it is possible to see machinery that were already used in mines at the end of the 1800s, or flotation cells still used today in mineral enrichment facilities, as well as about 400 m of galleries that, started in 1934 as a laboratory for students, became a safe air raid shelter in the last years of World War II.
The Istituto Minerario was founded in 1871 under the auspices of the Engineer Quintino Sella, Minister of Finance of the Lanza Government.
The entire museum collection includes almost 3800 mineralogical, petrographic, and fossil specimens from all over the world, supplemented by a collection of about a hundred archaeological finds from mining activities of Nuragic, Phoenician-Punic, Roman, Pisan medieval, and Aragonese era.
A collection of specimens that represents the specific identity of the Iglesiente territory and collects the didactic, mineralogical, and paleontological collections consisting of local minerals and fossils and specimens from deposits distributed throughout the regional, national, and global territory.
In April 2018, the new installation of the first room of the Museum titled “The Bricks of the Earth” was inaugurated. Currently, work for the second and third rooms are in progress.
The “The Bricks of the Earth” room introduces the visitor to the world of mineralogy through a multimedia installation that exhibits a careful selection of minerals, taken from the entire collection, and describe, with a sequence of images, specially shot and displayed through monitors and video projections, the formation of the Iglesiente geographical landscape by the four natural elements, water, air, earth, fire, and the flow of geological time that marks the slow process of earth formation from its origins.
English tours at 11:30 am and 4:30 pm.
Tickets to visit the Museo Istituto Minerario can be purchased directly on our website by clicking here.
INFORMATION
Address: Via Roma, 45, 09016 Iglesias SU
Telephone: +39 0781274507
