Opening hours: Closed Saturdays and public holidays; Mondays-Fridays 9am-4pm; Sundays (April-September) 10am-5pm; (October-March) 10am-4pm.
The Museum is housed in two buildings situated in the former "Upper" palace and garden compound designed by Szymon Bogumil Zug: the nineteenth-century classicist Frascati palace designed by Leonardo Marconi ,and the Pniewski's Villa, built in 1781 according to the design by Zug and redone in the eclectic style by Bohdan Pniewski in 1935-8.
The Museum, which came into being owing to the initiative of the Society of the Museum of the Earth, established in 1932, preserves its holdings in the following departments: Mineralogy and Petrography, Geology and Geological Monuments, Paleobotany, Paleozoology, Amber, History of Geological Science, and Promotion of the Earth Sciences. The Museum's first holdings, acquired in 1932, include a collection of meteorites found around the towns of Pultusk and Lowicz; a collection of Tertiary invertebrates from the areas of Volhynia and Podolia; a unique collection of vertebrates from the bone breccia in Weze; and Henryk Arctowski's collection of the world's rocks and minerals. Among the Museum's present-day strengths are its holdings of minerals and rocks, with a comprehensive set of minerals to be found in Poland, of rocks and minerals of the world, a collection of meteorites, a collection of precious and building stones; paleozoological holdings of fossilized animals, with one of Poland's largest collections of the Cretaceous and Tertiary invertebrates, a collection of Devonian fish from the Swietokrzyskie Mountains, of Jurassic ammonites from Lukow, and of Quaternary vertebrates; paleobotanical holdings of fossilized plants, including Tertiary plants from Turoszow and Cretaceous plants from the Lubelska Upland and Roztocze, and a collection of Carbon plants from Upper and Lower Silesia. The Museum also boasts one of the world's largest collections of the Baltic amber and other fossilized resins, with a group of natural varieties of amber and amber products, and plant and animal inclusions. The Museum has also a regional collection as well as maintains records documenting the development of geology in Poland, notably works by leading geologists from the nineteenth century onwards, iconographical materials, and manuscripts.
Permanent exhibitions: "There is Only One Earth"; "Processes Shaping the Appearance of the Earth"; "From the Earth's Geological Past"; "Amber and Nature"; "Granites, Granites..."; "Before There Was Coal"; "Building Stones" (at the open-air stone garden).
Muzeum Ziemi PAN w Warszawie
al. Na Skarpie 20/26, 27
00-488 Warszawa
Region: mazowieckie
Phone: (+48 22) 629 80 63
Phone/Fax: (+48 22) 629 74 97
WWW: www.mz-pan.pl
Email: mzgeol@warman.com.pl, muzeum.ziemi.pan@neostrada.pl