Petroleum Museum, Ploiești

The Petroleum Museum, listed in the national monuments register as the National Petroleum Museum, is at 8 Strada Dr. Bagdasar in Ploiești. It opened in October 1961 (Romanian Wikipedia gives 8 October) for the centenary of the Romanian oil industry, counted from 1857. Since 2017 it has been managed by the Prahova County Natural Sciences Museum, under Prahova County Council, and it reopened to visitors in February 2018. The museum occupies the house built in the late nineteenth century for Constantin Ion and Maria Căpitănescu, a listed monument (LMI code PH-II-m-B-16236). Besides the rooms inside the house, the courtyard has been laid out as an open-air exhibition. The holdings comprise 9,924 museum objects (according to CIMEC). The exhibits include a horse-driven bailer, a model of the first mechanically drilled well in Romania, a model of the Mehedințeanu brothers' 1856 "gas factory" at the Râfov tollgate, nineteenth-century miners' tools and lamps, oil lanterns, nineteenth-century wooden and metal drilling equipment, geological maps and mineral samples. Display panels explain the history of paraffin, oil and petrol production and the selective refining process with sulphur dioxide invented by Lazăr Edeleanu. The museum keeps a collection devoted to Lazăr Edeleanu, with patents, scientific papers, albums, more than 300 autograph letters and about 100 photographs, as well as diplomas, medals and photographs of specialists such as Grigore Cobălcescu, Ludovic Mrazec and Virgiliu Tacit. According to CIMEC it is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 17:00.