National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History
Moldova's oldest museum, in a Moorish-revival pavilion, covering geology, wildlife and peasant culture.
The museum traces its origin to 1889, when the Bessarabian zemstvo mounted an agricultural and craft exhibition in Chișinău and kept the displays together as a permanent zoological, agricultural and handicraft collection. A purpose-built home followed: designed by the architect Vladimir Țiganco, it was completed in 1905 and inaugurated in June 1906. Its horseshoe arches, tilework and slender turrets make it one of the few Moorish-revival buildings in the country and a landmark in its own right.
The permanent display, arranged under the title Nature. Human. Culture, fills fifteen halls and more than two thousand square metres, moving from geological eras and Bessarabian fauna to archaeology, peasant crafts and the furnished interior known as the casa mare. The holdings run to well over a hundred thousand items, among them palaeontological, entomological and numismatic collections. A botanical garden and a vivarium of reptiles, birds and fish adjoin the building, and a temporary exhibition hall hosts changing shows.
Highlights
- Moorish-revival building of 1905 by Vladimir Țiganco
- Permanent display 'Nature. Human. Culture' in fifteen halls
- Reconstructed casa mare and peasant craft collections
- Botanical garden and vivarium in the museum grounds
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