Vienna Museum of Natural History
| Naturhistorisches Museum | |
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| Established | between 1872 and 1889 |
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| Location | Vienna, Austria |
| Director | Christian Koeberl |
| Website | nhm-wien.ac.at/en |
The Natural History Museum (German: Naturhistorisches Museum) is a large natural history museum located in Vienna, Austria. The museum's website provides an overview in the form of a virtual tour.
The museum's earliest collections of artifacts were begun over 250 years ago. Today, its collections on display cover 8,700 square metres (94,000 sq ft).
As of 2011, the museum houses approximately 30 million objects and the number is growing. Behind the scenes, collections comprising some 25 million specimens and artefacts are the essential basis for the work of over 60 staff scientists. Their main fields of research cover a wide range of topics from the origins of the Solar System and the evolution of animals and plants to human evolution, as well as prehistoric traditions and customs.
The museum building opened in 1889 at the same time as the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The two museums have identical exteriors and face each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz. The Museum was built to house the huge collection of the Habsburgs.
Both buildings were built between 1872 and 1891 on the Ringstraße according to plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer.
The insect collections date from 1793 when Franz I of Austria purchased the scientific collections of Joseph Natterer, Sr. (father of 6-year-old, and later zoologist, Johann Natterer). In 1806 the museum purchased a collection of European insects made by Johann Carl Megerle von Mühlfeld, and Megerle became the first curator of insects. He organised the purchase of the Gundian collection of European butterflies. These old collections with Megerle's specimens were destroyed in October 1848, during a Hofburg fire; however, Johann Natterer's journey to Brazil (1817–1835) had led to an enormous enhancement of the collections: 60,000 insects were a part of the "Brazilian museum" in the "Harrach' house" and escaped the fire.
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