Naturalis

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Naturalis
Naturalis-Leiden-2019-1.jpg
Naturalis, September 19, 2019
Data
place Darwinweg 2, 2333 CR Leiden , The Netherlands Coordinates: 52 ° 9 '53 "  N , 4 ° 28' 24"  EWorld icon
Art
opening August 9, 1820
Number of visitors (annually) 339,550 (2015)
Website

The Naturalis Biodiversity Center has been the name for the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum (National Natural History Museum) in Leiden since the new building was completed in 1998 . It is a natural history museum where various forms of nature education are practiced.

Among other things, Naturalis coordinated an online overview of Dutch biodiversity .

history

The forerunners were the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie (National Museum for Natural History) and the Rijksmuseum voor Geologie en Mineralogie (National Museum for Geology and Mineralogy). The Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie was built in 1820 by royal decision. Existing collections were merged here. The public had only very limited access to this museum, sometimes not at all. The first director was Coenraad Jacob Temminck , he appointed Heinrich Boie as curator in 1821 and, from 1825, Hermann Schlegel as well . After Boie's death in Indonesia in 1827 , Schlegel was officially appointed curator at the museum in 1828. With Temminck's death in 1858, Schlegel succeeded him as director, a position he held until his death in 1884.

After the merger with the collections of the Zoölogisch Museum Amsterdam (ZMA) and the Nationaal Herbarium Nederland in 2011/2012, the number of objects rose to around 37 million.

New museum building

In 1986 it was decided that the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie should become a public museum. An extensive new building was necessary for this. The cost of the museum project - around 60 million euros - was the highest for a museum since the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam was built .

The new museum was added to a former 17th century plague house that had served as accommodation for the Legermuseum (an army museum) since 1954 , which moved to Delft in 1984 . The Pesthaus, which forms the entrance hall and where the cash register, cloakroom, museum shop and café are located, is connected to the new building by an 80-meter-long footbridge, where the collection departments and the library are located. The museum also has an extensive educational program. The museum is located at Darwinweg 2 in Leiden. The museum library, which has a very large collection of books and illustrated biology and geology magazines, is freely accessible.

collection

The collection consists of over 40 million zoological, botanical and geological collectibles, including:

  • 12,000 gallons
  • 6,000 slime molds
  • 121,000 wood samples
  • 140,000 books
  • 14,000 scientific journal titles
  • 57,000 prints and drawings
  • 13,000 cards
  • 91,500 microfiches
  • 310,000 photographs, slides and glass negatives
  • 10,000 objects in the educational collection

Most of the collections are housed in a 60-meter-high tower, a landmark of Leiden, which opened in April 1998. Some parts of the collections are kept in a depot in the former museum building on Raamsteeg in the city center of Leiden.

Exhibitions

In addition to its temporary exhibitions, the museum has several permanent exhibitions:

  • Nature theater (animals, plants, fungi, unicellular organisms, bacteria, stones and minerals, an impression of nature in all its different forms).
  • Primeval Parade (the history of the earth and the development of life are presented using fossils)
  • Life (it shows how plants and animals live and survive on earth).
  • Inside the earth (for children and their parents, children learn in a playful way how nature works).
  • Biotechnology (games and films show the visitor how important DNA is in all life processes).
  • Treasury (special security guards and safes protect the precious gems, including a collection that once belonged to King William I of the Netherlands , as well as specimens from animal species that have become extinct in recent centuries).

Web links

Commons : Naturalis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Contact , Naturalis. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  2. Maaike Lek: Naturalis ontvangt voor derde jaar op rij recordaantal bezoekers ", Sleutelstad.nl , 2016. Accessed on August 20, 2020
  3. ^ Gustaaf Schlegel: Hermann Schlegel. Life picture of a naturalist . Ed .: Hugo Köhler. Published by Oskar Bonde. Altenburg 1886
  4. Naturalis website "Collections" ( Memento of April 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed in the Internet Archive on October 20, 2019
  5. Brief description of the collection , accessed on August 20, 2020