Poni-Cernătescu Memorial Museum, Iași

The Poni-Cernătescu Memorial Museum stands at 7B Strada Mihail Kogălniceanu, in the Copou area of Iași. It is a memorial museum dedicated to the chemist Petru Poni (1841-1925), a member of the Romanian Academy, his wife, the poet Matilda Cugler-Poni (1851-1931), and their grandson, the chemist and academician Radu Cernătescu. The house was built in 1839 by Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi and had several owners before it became the home of Professor Petru Poni around 1880. Matilda Cugler-Poni, a member of the Junimea society, hosted literary gatherings here attended by Mihai Eminescu and Ion Creangă. The house was damaged in the bombing of June 1944. In 1971 Poni's daughter, the chemist Margareta Poni, donated it to the city to become a museum. After restoration it opened on 7 November 1991 as the Petru Poni Museum of Iași Chemistry and took its current name in 1994. The permanent exhibition, reorganised and reopened in 2012, recreates an early twentieth-century residence: the entrance hall, dining room, Petru Poni's study, Matilda Cugler-Poni's drawing room and Radu Cernătescu's room, with furniture, photographs, decorative art and Poni's diplomas and decorations. A room fitted out as a chemistry laboratory hosts educational workshops for pupils, and in the basement a permanent mineral exhibition from the collection of the Ștefan Procopiu Museum of Science and Technology recreates a mine setting. In the garden stands the gazebo known as the "poetry kiosk", rebuilt in 1995, and nearby a bronze bust of Petru Poni, placed in 1998. The museum is part of the Moldova National Museum Complex in Iași. The building is a historic monument, LMI code IS-II-m-B-03918.