A museum about museums
The way specimens were displayed a century and a half ago, preserved intact.
Cezar Suceveanu — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Cezar Suceveanu — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Cezar Suceveanu — CC BY-SA 3.0
Moderately. The skeletons and specimens appeal, but the display is traditional with no interactivity and may feel static next to a modern museum. The ASTRA open-air museum south of the city suits them far better.
It is a branch of the Brukenthal National Museum, an institution covering several museums in Sibiu including the main art gallery on the Large Square. A combined ticket covering more than one branch may be available and is better value if you plan two or more.
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A natural history museum in a nineteenth-century building put up for the purpose, and a branch of the Brukenthal National Museum. The collection grew out of the Transylvanian Society for Natural Sciences, founded by the city's German-speaking residents in the nineteenth century to study the region's nature. That origin explains the character of the display: wooden cabinets, ranked specimens and hand-written labels, a nineteenth-century museum preserved as it was rather than redesigned. That is what makes it more interesting than its contents: you are visiting a museum of how museums were presented a century and a half ago, as much as visiting it to see the specimens. Anyone expecting a modern interactive display will find it dated; anyone who values that style will find it rare. The building stands on Strada Cetății near the wall towers, so it combines naturally with a walk along the line of the fortifications.
The way specimens were displayed a century and a half ago, preserved intact.
The collection grew from a society founded by the city's German speakers to study the region's nature.
No modern interactive display here; the value is in the old style, not the technology.
Strada Cetății, central Sibiu