The collections of the Museum of Mineralogy and Petrology were created within the framework of the Physiographic Society, which was founded in 1835. The University included the collections in its premises from its foundation in 1837. In 1908, the University Museums of Mineralogy - Petrography, Paleontology - Geology, and Zoology and Botany were established and have been operating as independent branches since then. The Museum of Mineralogy and Petrology is administratively dependent on the Section of Mineralogy and Petrology of the Department of Geology and Geoenvironment. According to [DiSSCo-GR](https://www.dissco.eu/gr/), the collections of Mineralogy and Petrology Museum of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens host more than 30,000 specimens of minerals, gems, ore, and rocks. These specimens are electronically catalogued in a spreadsheet, while most of them have already been digital photographed. The collections host specimens collected since the early 19th century from many important and historical localities e.g. ex USSR (i.e. Urals) and central Europe (i.e. Alps), as well as from various parts of Greece (i.e. Lavrion), Africa, America (i.e. Minas Gerais) and China. The importance of the collection is not only due to the presentation of particularly aesthetic specimens, but also to the abundance and quality of mineral specimens from "classic" sites of the then states of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the German Empire and Tsarist Russia, mainly from sites that are now exhausted and are known only from the literature. In the Museum's collections there are many specimens from the Mining Mountains (former Hungarian mining province) such as Schemnitz and Kremnitz, from Freiburg in Saxony, the Harz Mountains in Germany, Siebenbuergen in Romania (Nagyag, Banat, Felsobanya regions), the Ural mountains (Miask, Nishne Tagil, Achmatovsk, Mursinka regions) and Siberia (Nertschinsk region).
(Source : GBIF / GrSciColl)
GR - Greece
mineralmuseum@geol.uoa.gr
GR - Greece
mineralmuseum@geol.uoa.gr
ProfPanagiotis Voudouris