Photo credit: (c) Angelo BREZOIANU / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

“The Baia Mare Region is known in the country and worldwide due to the mining activity, carried out for over 680 years in the county of Maramures. Over the years, this activity has had a fluctuating intensity, reaching the pinnacle between 1960 and 1990, when significant quantities of ores of lead, zinc, copper, gold and silver were extracted from the 11 underground mines, as well as the famous mineral samples of outstanding esthetic features called mine flowers,” said the director of the museum Prof. Ioan Denut.

The idea of purchasing mineral samples to underpin the establishment of collections and possibly of a museum, belonged to curator Victor Gorduza, who decided in 1969 to buy 533 samples for the Maramures County Museum.

In 1976 the Natural Science section was founded, its main task being to manage the nearly 6,000 samples already purchased. Due to the favourable development and circumstances, this section hosting a heritage of 14,000 items was moved in 1989 to a new location, where the permanent exhibition, still functional nowadays, was opened on Nov. 6.

Three years later, on December 10, 1992, the Natural Science section pulls out from the county museum, turning into the Baia Mare-Maramures Mineralogy Museum.

Today, the “Victor Gorduza” County Museum of Mineralogy in Baia Mare preserves, examines and exploits in scientific, exhibitional and educational terms a collection of 16,927 mineral samples characterized by a wide typological diversity, 2,405 fossil samples, 435 samples of rocks and 569 samples of ores, representing a collection of 20,336 items.

The permanent exhibition in the current building is home to over 1,000 mineral samples and is organized in four sections: the petrography section that includes a mobile model showing the overall geological structure of Romania’s north-western area, as well as the main leads in the deposits of the Baia Mare mining basin. The Neogene magmatic rocks form the largest deposits in the region and are part of the geologic composition of the Oas-Gutai-Tibles Mountains and the Toroioaga massif. The visitors can also find out interesting information about the classification and the main types of rocks — andesite, basalt, dacite, rhyolite, as well as their use as ornamental rocks in construction. Emphasis in put on the fossil flora in the Chiuzbaia Scientific Reserve, located at the foot of the Ignis massif, including samples of diatomite with leaf impressions, the testimony of an extremely rich forest, representing one of the largest deposits of Neogene fossil plants in Europe.

As for the mineralogy section, the information regards the geological processes concerning the formation of minerals, the seven crystallographic systems and the main physical properties of the minerals: morphology and accretion, color, brilliancy, transparency, cleavage and hardness. The mineral samples in the collection of the museum are presented according to the general classification by categories.

The sulphides and sulphosalts are some of the main minerals in the region, standing out for their spectacular beauty: the argentiferous galena at the Herja mine, the shiny sphalerite (also known as zinc blende) from Rodna, the chalcopyrite with big shiny crystals at Cavnic, the perfectly cubic pyrite crystals at Tibles, the pyrrhotite, arsenopyrite and marcasite as hexagonal crystals at Herja mine, the bright red cinnabar, the crystals of tetrahedrite, single or twinned crystals at the Cavnic mine, the dark grey jamesonite at the Herja mine, the orpiment and realgar at Baia Sprie mine or the marcasite combined with amethyst at the Sasar mine.

Very particular in the region is the stibine, its samples being considered among the most spectacular in the world: shiny thick prisms at Baiut mine, radial aggregates at the Herja mine and especially, the very long acicular crystals in paragenesis with transparent barite, from Baia Sprie mine.

Photo credit: (c) Constantin CIOBOATA / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

The calcite (carbonates) appears in an unimaginable array of shapes and colors: colorless or white, yellow, pink, red, brown, gray or black — a variety one can see only at the Herja mine. The dented forms, similar to flower petals, but mostly the spherical shapes at the Herja mine in black/white are unique in the world. The pink rhodochrosite as rhombohedral crystals is exceptionally represented by the samples at the Cavnic mine.

The baryte (sulfates) is one of the minerals that have brought fame to the Baia Mare region. This mineral covers a wide range of colours: colorless, milky white, yellow, brown, red, gray, blue. The intense red color, unique in the world, can be seen only at the samples from the Baia Sprie mine. The blue barytes or the yellow / black big crystals at the Cavnic mine are very special. The gypsum stands out as transparent crystals under the form of large prisms up to a meter, discovered at the Cavnic mine. Black crystals can be seen at the samples from the Herja mine.

The halides are represented by fluorite that is included in green, purple or yellow cubic crystals, the biggest having been discovered at the Cavnic mine.

As for the phosphates and wolframates, rare species of wolframite are displayed, as big, prismatic crystals, scheelite with bipyramidal cristals up to 3 cm at the Baia Sprie mine and vivianite at the Ilba mine, revealing one of the biggest crystals in the world.

As regards the silicates, the quartz can be seen across the Baia Mare region in various forms: the dendritic similar to a coral, long transparent prisms, the fir-tree-shaped quartz at the Cavnic mine or the amethyst at the Red Valley are included in this category. The blue chalcedon, the jasper and red agate completes the series.

There is also a group of minerals described for the first time as new species following studies on the samples from the mines in the Baia Mare region: the semseyte with rosette aggregates of 2-3 inches of gray crystals, the fizelyite as lamellar crystals, the fuloppite, the andorite and klebelsbergite. As for the fluorescent minerals, by exposure to ultraviolet light, the pink calcites and fluorine minerals reveal some amazing lights.

The ores section includes information (location, map and geological section, shape and type of deposit, genesis, mineralogical composition) and the representative samples of ore from hydrothermal, polymetallic gold-silver deposits, associated to the Neogene magmatism in Maramures County and surrounding areas: Turt, Ilba, Nistru, Sasar, Dealul Crucii, Herja, Valea Rosie, Baia Sprie, Suior, Cavnic, Baiut and Toroioaga (all these mines are shut down).

In order to bring to the fore the aesthetic and economic value of these minerals, also exhibited are semi-finished and finished products that resulted from the processing of minerals: gold and silver ingots, cathodes and copper oxides, pipes, plates and lead ingots, copper chloride, selenium and tellurium.

As regards the “mine flowers” section, this includes one of the most valuable mineral samples, the so called “mine flowers”.
The minerals samples included in the collection of the “Victor Gorduza” County Mineralogy Museum in Baia Mare are spectacular aesthetically, but also rare in the world, which is why some of them are classified in the treasury category of Romania’s movable cultural heritage.

Photo credit: (c) Angelo BREZOIANU / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

Photo credit: (c) Angelo BREZOIANU / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

Over the 40 years of activity, of which 25 years at the current location and structure (celebrated on November 6, 2014), the Mineralogy Museum has organized 115 temporary exhibitions in the country and abroad.

The museum is one of the main tourist attractions in Baia Mare, being annually visited by thousands of Romanian and foreign tourists.AGERPRES