Mining Museum

Saint-Petersburg Mining Museum

Established in 1773 under a decree of Catherine II.

The world’s third-largest natural-scientific exposition.

Among the museum’s collection are more than 230,000 exhibits, including rare minerals, gemstones and metals, the most extensive meteorite collection, historical and working models of mining equipment, paleontological finds, archive records.

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The exhibition of Ural stone-cutters in the Mining Museum was enriched with new exhibits

On Tuesday, 7 November, the Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University announced that the temporary exhibition "The Wealth of the Mineral Resources in the Art of Stone Carvers" has been enriched with new exhibits.

The Mining Museum learned how to move the Earth’s crust

It took hundreds of millions of years for geological processes to form a single supercontinent, Pangea, in the Late Paleozoic. About 220 million years ago, it split in two. Today, the six continents on Earth are very slowly but surely moving toward each other.

Urban Sketchers Exhibition Opens at Mining Museum

An exhibition of the Urban Sketchers international community of artists began its work at the Mining Museum in St. Petersburg. The exhibition presents paintings in the technique of rapid drawing, depicting the interiors and exhibits of one of the largest natural science museums in the world.

St. Petersburg Mining Museum to Take Part in Russia-Wide Atlas Nefti Project

Pictures of historical exhibits from the Mining Museum will be included in the catalogue commemorating the 300th anniversary of the petroleum industry in Russia.

Mining University’s Students Recreate Antique Vases Using 3D Technology

St. Petersburg Mining Museum's researchers have recreated the look of rare 19th-century fluorite vases.

Classic-Type Museum to Die Out. Museums of a New Kind Making Billions of Dollars

It has been decades since museums, along with books and theatre, were foretold to cease to exist. COVID-19 has indeed contributed to the debate regarding the "things of the past".

Всем здравствуйте! Может кто знает что-нибудь о биографии Черткова Анатолия Филатовича? Он был маркшейдером, учавствовал в строительстве тоннеля секретного под Амуром в 1937 году. Очень нужна информация ,спасибо!

’Jurassic Park’ in St. Petersburg

To get an idea of how Earth looked like in the distant past, one just has to look attentively at today's living creatures. Some ancient animals still resemble their progenitors. Some organisms are no longer found. The others have survived without losing their original form.

Student geological expedition opened the season

The scientific team, created in February 2021 on the basis of the Department of Geology and Exploration of Mineral Deposits and the Mining Museum, returned from its first field trip to the Putilovsky open pit.

Mining University celebrates Victory Day

On the eve of Victory Day, a wreath-laying ceremony took place at the oldest technical university in Russia. Wreaths and flowers were laid at the foot of the memorial to the students and professors who died during the Great Patriotic War.

Mining Museum during the Siege of Leningrad

In 1918, the Soviet government relocated from Petrograd to Moscow. Subsequently, some of the Mining Museum's most valuable objects were transferred to the Diamond Fund, which did not, however, stop the natural-scientific repository from replenishing its collections.

Virtual Tour of the Mining Museum in St. Petersburg

The Mining Museum in St. Petersburg is three years older than America, while Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, can be considered the Museum’s rightful mother. Now by its size, it is the world’s third-largest natural-scientific exposition gathered in a building designed by Russian architect Andrey Voronikhin.

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Harzburgite: a symbol of Germany’s attraction to Russia

World War I halted Russian-German friendship for eight long years of bloodshed and mutual distrust. The Rapallo Treaty of April 1922 restored normal relations, and the credit for this went not to politicians, but to men of action. Such as the German scientist and businessman Friedrich Kranz.

Where on Earth are the deepest sinkholes

Living on the edge of a hole 240 meters deep and nearly half a kilometer in diameter is a dubious joy, but the residents of the South African town of Kimberley are quite happy. Their "Big Hole" is the world's oldest primary diamond deposit. From 1872 to 1914 it yielded three tons of the hardest and most expensive stone (14.5 million carats).

How the study of glacial boulders led Kropotkin to imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress

Back in the second half of the 19th century, most geographers believed that about 10,000 years ago the territory of modern Russia was a "sea across which ice blocks were carried, leaving erratic boulders when they melted" (from a historical sketch by Vladimir Obruchev).

The hypothesis of the origin of the sorcerer Melchior and the alloy of the same name

The patent for melchior - an alloy of copper and nickel - was received by the French in 1827. The name was later given to it by the Germans. They caught the consonance in the pronunciation of the names of the inventors Mayo and Saurier with the name of the Evangelical sorcerer. It is customary to give primacy in obtaining "cheap silver" to the Chinese.

What did the author of “Sannikov Land” find in the Kazakh steppes

The Dzungarian Gate is a corridor, 50 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide, between the mountain systems of the Altai and Tien Shan, the most important section of the main branch of the Great Silk Road. Here is the continental pole of the planet - the point of greatest distance from the world ocean.

How was the blue color reference obtained

Fourteen years ago, for the first time in 200 years, there was a new blue pigment. Scientists at the University of Oregon were experimenting with materials for electronics and unexpectedly received an inorganic compound with a rich blues color. It turned out that it is practically non-fading and, unlike its predecessor, cobalt, is not toxic.

How the poet Nekrasov, with the help of a bear, reasoned with the emperor

Alexander II personally harvested 150 bears during his not particularly long life. Some of the trophies went to the participants of the hunt, others were used as diplomatic gifts or donated to museums and educational institutions. The bear killed on 9 March 1865 in Lisino near St.

Why did Count Vorontsov needed the strongest walls in the world

Cobblestones, with the light hand of sculptor Ivan Shadr, are associated with the weapons of the proletariat. During the revolutionary events of 1917, all Moscow sidewalks, including Red Square, were paved with such stones. Today's heavy-duty diabase appeared on it only in 1930.

Why Russia starts near Minusinsk

The history of non-ferrous metallurgy in the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory began not with the construction of a refinery in 1941, and not with the commissioning of one of the world's largest aluminum plants in the mid-1960s. The first bronze items were cast here by the Iranian-speaking Tagars long before the heyday of ancient Athens, in the 7th century BC.

How Madagascar bandits helped to modernize the mint of St. Petersburg

Russian monarchs thought broadly, but often dependently. For example, Peter the Great adopted from the British East India Company not only the scheme for building shipyards for St. Petersburg, but also the strategy of expansion to Asia and Africa. In chess, copying the moves of a stronger opponent will never lead to victory, but in politics this method can sometimes give unexpected results.

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Where is the evidence to prove that the bison is not an aurochs?

The law on regulation of hunting in the Russian Empire (1892) was still 90 years away, when the Emperor Alexander I took over the role of an official in issuing permits for shooting wild animals. It is true that such an order concerned only one area, Belovezhskaya Forest, and one species, the bison (or Bison bonasus in scientific jurisprudence). By the beginning of the 19th century, the vastest tract of forest in Europe remained the only place where these bison could live.

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→ Golden Names of Russia

The forgotten legend of the Russian military-industrial complex

The Kalashnikov assault rifle is widely known throughout the world - in a sense, it has become one of Russia's symbols, along with bears, black caviar and oil. The most widespread small arms in service in one hundred and six countries are included in the Guinness Book of Records: more than 100 million units have been produced to date.

The man every chemist in the country worked for

Despite the fact that chemistry begins to be studied in the eighth grade and is indispensable in dozens of industries that are crucial for the economy, if an ordinary Russian is asked to name the names of great Russian chemists, the vast majority will limit themselves to Lomonosov and Mendeleev. Only a small part would add a third name - Academician Nikolai Kurnakov.

How a Pole enriched Russia

Russia is often referred to as a raw material country, giving this concept a negative meaning. They say that the subsoil is rich in minerals, but there are problems with value chains.

The Mother of the Polar Expedition and Grandmother of Marine Geophysics

The Arctic, its harsh nature and complex organizational and technical conditions have always attracted men. To work at drifting stations with the risk of being in icy water at any moment, to drive worn-out all-terrain vehicles in a snowstorm to the next survey, to drill wells in the ice...

How a White Guardsman Obtained the Stalin Prize and Became Director of MISIS Institute

The number of people who left Russia after the Civil War of 1917 reaches 2.5 million. For the most part, they were military, scientists, doctors, teachers, engineers, in general, intellectuals - creative, humanitarian and technical.

The “grandfather” of Russian railroads

The railroad complex in Russia is one of the largest in the world. It ranks second in terms of total track length, second only to the USA.

Vladimir Abazarov: “Take Megion oil, Motherland!”

The discovery of the largest field in Russia and the seventh largest in the world, called Samotlor, was a resounding victory for Russian geologists and drillers in 1965. At that time, few believed in the prospects of an oil deposit located under a huge lake, surrounded for many kilometres by impassable swamps.

Who in Russia was called “the miner’s general”

Today, business coaches often hear the "cautionary tale of the life of Parkes Cadman", who lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A boy from a poor family, from the age of 11 he was forced to work in a mine as a "ponyboy" - driving a coal wagon.

How the director of the Geological Institute of the Academy of Sciences got on the pages of Solzhenitsyn’s novel

In 1949, the investigation of a large group of geologists, called the "Krasnoyarsk Case", resounded throughout the USSR. Twenty-seven people, including 4 academicians and corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences and 10 professors, doctors of geological and mineralogical sciences, were put under investigation.

The Incredible Story of Mr. Mechanobre

His name was known and treated with great reverence by the heads of the largest mining and processing and metallurgical plants in the country, rectors of the relevant universities, and representatives of the academic community. And how not to know - machines of his design work today in at least 40 countries of the world.

Emeralds in Mining Museum. Video Collection

In The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Alexander Pushkin wrote about a squirrel cracking wondrous nuts. It is not by chance that the gemstones appeared in the fairy tale. In August 1931, when Pushkin finalised his poem, Saint Petersburg had been already taken over by the ’emerald fever’.

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’Jurassic Park’ in St. Petersburg

To get an idea of how Earth looked like in the distant past, one just has to look attentively at today’s living creatures. Some ancient animals still resemble their progenitors. Some organisms are no longer found. The others have survived without losing their original form.

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→ Vernissage

Mysteries of the Mining Museum: The two caskets of the Empress

Queen Elizabeth II often wears a diamond tiara. She also wears a collar of pearls and diamonds. Another favourite of hers is the brooch with a cabochon-cut sapphire and a drop-shaped pearl pendant, which she wore during a state visit to Russia in 1994. From Maria Feodorovna she has also a brooch with a huge sapphire and large diamonds.

Secrets of the Mining Museum: The Metal Saboteur

What is the job of the Special Forces? Quickly and, most importantly, to effectively carry out operations "with little blood on foreign territory". Palladium is capable of such a blow to the gold.

Mystical Riddle of Florentine Box

Amongst St. Petersburg Mining Museum exhibits, there is a unique 18th-century box. Its history is intertwined with both the Italian Medici family and the royal dynasty of the Russian Empire.

Silver-Induced Disease

Having silverware at home was at all times regarded as a sign of prosperity and luxuriousness. Kitchen utensils made of precious metal symbolised that their owner was of blue blood, which is somewhat surprisingly not a figurative expression. Often people who had expensive silver services turned blue literally.

Agressive Pearl-Bearing Clam

A hundred years ago or so, people risked their lives to get their hands on pearls. Not only it was dangerous to dive without gear, but some giant molluscs could grow that big they could actually kill.

Bribes Paid in Copper Were Once Customary in Russia

Two hundred years ago, the gold fever took Russia by storm. Hereditary nobility, merchant adventurers, ordinary people — everyone was leaving their settlements, abandoning their routine life, and heading straight to Siberia. These events followed the Senate edict allowing to freely look for and mine precious metals.

The Metal That Costs More Than Gold

Some 500 years ago, Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro captured the last Incan emperor Atahualpa. Although a ransom for Atahualpa's release was paid with gold, the emperor was still executed. Soon the conquest of Peru was completed; the indigenous people kept fighting off for a few more decades, but the Spanish had firearms in their hands. This drew a final line under the invasion of the country.

Fancy ’Diamonds’ for the Poor

Few people know why d'Artagnan duelled Athos and Aramis, whilst everyone knows the story of Porthos. The Gascon found himself entangled in Porthos' cloak and thereby learnt that a sumptuous dressing embroidered with gold was made of buffalo leather.

What Size Was the Prehistoric Dragonfly?

The unresolved mysteries of evolution are still there to solve them. Many evolution stages have not been fully understood yet, and humankind seeks to find answers to what animals that lived on our planet millions of years ago looked like.

Russian Mineral-Resource Sector’s Coat of Arms

The term 'coat of arms' can be traced back to the 12th century, with the start of heraldic tradition arising from the Crusades. The crusaders were dealing with the self-identification issues at the time - they needed to know who was the one who accomplished the 'feat' and who was who on a level resembling modern 'friend-or-foe' systems.

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Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University continues a series of laboratory experiments aimed at creating a fundamentally new technology for the production of aluminum. Now it is produced by electrolysis of alumina solution in molten cryolite, and this process takes place in apparatuses with horizontally arranged anode and cathode.

Novatek assessed the urgency of modernizing Russia’s higher education system

The Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University continues to implement a pilot project to improve the system of personnel training for the national economy. One of its characteristic features is the enrollment of students exclusively in the specialties of basic higher education with a study period of 5.5 years.

Iran: Instructions for use. Part IV: Results

At the end of January 2024, a representative delegation from Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University spent a working week in Shiraz, the second capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at the invitation of Shiraz University.

Iran: Instructions for use. Part III: Science

In the context of a mobilised economy and the solidarity of the population with this position of the state, there is no other option but to build relations with industry, paraphrasing the slogan "Everything for the front, everything for victory". That is, any research or development should serve the task of intensive technological development of the country.

Iran: Instructions for use. Part II: Education

In 1979, mass demonstrations against the Shah's regime took place in Iran, resulting in Reza Pahlavi's flight and a complete change in the country's state system.

Iran: Instructions for use. Part I

How beautiful is my blooming Shiraz!
May God Almighty protect it!
Come to Shiraz and see it:
Everyone who lives in it is perfect.

Students of St. Petersburg Mining University spoke about the advantages of participating in the School Leader competition

The second season of the School Leader competition started at St. Petersburg Mining University. Any 11th grade student can sign an agreement of intent to participate in it.

The “grandfather” of Russian railroads

The railroad complex in Russia is one of the largest in the world. It ranks second in terms of total track length, second only to the USA.

Africa told about expectations from cooperation with Russia

Trade turnover between Russia and Africa continues to grow. In the first eight months of last year, it increased by 43.5%, to $15.5 billion, and the share of the countries of the sunny continent in the total volume of our foreign trade increased from 2.3% to 3.7%.

St. Petersburg Mining University has introduced a new concept of postgraduate training

Russia's oldest technical university became the first higher education institution in our country to launch a pilot project to improve the higher education system, which was initiated by President Vladimir Putin.

A Namibian expert described how the politics of neoliberal colonialism works

A major international congress "Africa Seeks Solutions", attended by heads of leading universities, representatives of executive and legislative authorities, scientists and businessmen from more than 40 countries of the sunny continent, ended in St. Petersburg.

Delegates from 40 African countries came to St. Petersburg Mining University

The idea for this forum was born during the II Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum.

Vladimir Abazarov: “Take Megion oil, Motherland!”

Valentina Matvienko supported the three-year development plan of St. Petersburg Mining University

It includes the construction of new dormitories and an educational complex, as well as the implementation of a pilot project to improve the system of higher education in Russia and scaling its results to the whole country.

A plant for the production of environmentally friendly hydrogen, which was being built near the German town of Heide, will not be put into operation. All work there has been permanently halted. This was announced last week, three years after the creation of the alliance "H2 West Coast", which was to realise this project, by its initiators from France, Denmark and Germany.

The academic community has responded to the question of whether higher education should be accessible to all

The size of the state scholarship for students today is 2,819 rubles. Even taking into account the additional payments for those who study "excellent" and "good", and they amount to 50% and 25% of the basic rate, respectively, these funds are not enough even for food.

St. Petersburg Mining University completed the transfer of students from bachelor’s to specialised degrees

More than 90% of first-year students of the Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University who were enrolled in bachelor's degree programmes took advantage of the offer to transfer to 5.5-year specialisation programmes.

How a paleontological discovery thwarted a nuclear explosion

As is well known, projects to turn the rivers southward to the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea were widely discussed in the post-war USSR. They struck the imagination with their scale. Ordinary people imagined multi-kilometer lines of diggers or, at best, excavators. The official propaganda did not show the details: the construction of channels was supposed to intensify by means of series of directed nuclear blasts of low power.

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We decipher Pushkin. What was in the old man’s net instead of a goldfish?

Waiting by the sea for the weather is about amber mining. Water throws the petrified resin of ancient coniferous trees onto the shore, the more abundant the storm. There is even a special term - amber storms. The Baltic Sea is the richest in amber. It’s estimated that in the three millennia since the beginning of trade between the North and Ancient Egypt, about 125 thousand tons of this precious stone have been collected on its shores.

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Exclusive stone from the “edge of the earth”

The question of the location of the edge of the earth on a planet shaped like a flattened ball is non-trivial. The most entitled to this status are probably the outlying areas in eastern Eurasia. This is where the Manchu dynasty of China’s Qing dynasty expanded northward at the end of the 17th century. Russia, in turn, was also interested in developing the Transbaikal Region. The Nerchinsk Treaty of 1689 was the first document on the borders between the two empires.

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Were the Mayans right? The era of eternal blue jeans is rooted in the Perm region

Prediction of the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar in December 2012 is considered a mistake of interpreters or a clever Indian joke. However, it is from this time point physicists find, for example, the change in the constant characteristics of the proton. It is easy to write off the inexplicable phenomenon to imperfect measurement technology, but one wants mystery. Especially since an amazing coincidence opened up - it was in the final year of the Mayan calendar that the world finally unraveled the secret of the unclouded azure of their religious artifacts.

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The most significant exchange in the history of mineralogy

In September 1819, the St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society received as a gift from the literary genius and universalist scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe a part of his personal collection of minerals. Two batches, of 105 and 153 pieces, i.e., individual pieces of geological bodies, have been recorded as having been received. Among them are amethyst, rock crystal, chalcedony, augite, various kinds of granite, quartz rock, feldspars, and mica.

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The mineral that could keep the twin towers of New York City from collapsing

The Greek word άσβεστος [ásvestos] translates as ”unquenchable.” In this case, the main useful property of asbestos, a mineral of the silicate class, is its incombustibility. The exact explanation of the paradox is probably hidden in the asbestos papyruses of the priests of ancient Egypt, which have not yet been found, but there is a hint to the solution.

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How the theory of the origin of oil led a famous scientist to the Gulag

The main author of the theory of the abiogenous origin of oil, Nikolai Kudryaevtsev, spent decades fighting the ”geological elite,” proving that oil comes from non-biological sources of carbon and hydrogen deep in the Earth’s crust and mantle. He received years in camps for his work, but the concept became popular worldwide and eventually changed the established view of the future of mankind.

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A Tombstone to Akaki Akakievich from the Paleozoic

One of Gogol’s most bitter and brilliant jokes is in the name and patronymic of the classic ”little man,” the protagonist of his story The Overcoat. Akakia, as we know, was called by the Byzantines as the attribute of the ceremonial royal vestment - a silk roll of ashes. It was supposed to remind the first persons of the Orthodox Empire and other participants of the ceremonies of the perishable nature of the earthly blessings, the fatality of fate and the transience of life.

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Asphalt: From Moses to Kuindzhi

What can surprise the asphalt. The road surface, which first made itself known during the construction of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Two square meters were poured with it. The future autobahns could not be discerned from it.

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Why are worms trumps? To what does Britain owe them?

The beginning of the end for the Invincible Armada and the harbinger of the end of Spain’s golden age was a sudden, violent storm in the Atlantic. At the end of May 1588 130 ships left Lisbon in the direction of the Channel to destroy the English fleet, but were forced to stand for a long repair in La Coruña in the north-west of the Pirine Peninsula.

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