Aiud Museum of Natural Sciences

The Museum of Natural Sciences in Aiud is the oldest museum of its kind in Romania, established in 1796 within the Colegiul Național Bethlen Gábor by professor Ferenc Benkő (1745-1816), a Transylvanian naturalist and mineralogist. The college itself was founded in 1622 by Prince Gabriel Bethlen in Alba Iulia and relocated to Aiud in 1662. The official founding date of the museum is attested by an 18th-century manuscript, the Catalogus Raritatum et Benefactorum, preserved at the Biblioteca Documentară Bethlen in Aiud. The museum currently holds 52 collections, organized across four rooms. The first room covers geology and palaeontology: mammoth tusks and molars, the tibia of a sauropod dinosaur found near Alba Iulia, rocks and minerals. The second room shows present-day fauna, arranged systematically from invertebrates to reptiles, including butterfly collections. The third room houses birds and mammals, among them a bird of paradise and a kangaroo. The fourth room hosts temporary exhibitions and educational activities, for example on the evolution of the vertebrate skeleton. The collections survived the devastation of 1848-1849 and the fire of 1948. Address: Strada Bethlen Gábor nr. 1, first floor, Aiud, județul Alba. Did you know that as early as 1720, long before the museum was officially founded, the Aiud college already had a sizeable collection of rarities, with new pieces added every year?