Grigore Antipa National Museum

Located near Piata Victoriei, on Pavel Dimitrievici Kiseleff Road no.1, the Antipa Museum is one of the most long-standing institutions for biodiversity research and public education in Romania. At the same time, it is one of the most appreciated museums in the country, boasting with an impressive collection of extremely well-made exhibits. Established in 1834, at the request of the Great Ban Mihalache Ghica, the brother of the ruler Alexandru Ghica, the museum was initially composed only from exhibits donated by its initiator, including birds, mammals, mollusks, fish, fossils of various types, different minerals and coins from Greek. In 2009, the Antipa museum underwent an impressive modernization, thus becoming one of the most sought after museums in the capital city of Romania.

But, in order to better understand why Grigore Antipa Natural History Museum is so important for us, let's have a look at its history. 

As we already mentioned, the Natural History Museum in Bucharest was founded in 1834, but it had different locations before this one. At first, the actual Natural History Museum was just a series of collections presented by the Great Ban, meaning the Governor, Mihalache Ghica. The location for his collection to be presented was St. Sava College in 1831. After three years, following a public resolution, it was established what was called "The Museum of Natural History" with the same exhibition place,  St. Sava College. At that time, this college was located on the site of the current University. 

Mihalache Ghica's collection was enriched in 1882 with the most valuable donation made by Hilarie Mitrea, a doctor from the village of Rasinari. That donation included over one thousand species of animals, from insects, fishes, amphibians, to birds and mammals, most of all collected from Indonesia during the time when Mitrea was a doctor in the Dutch colonial army.