1rst Hall
Collection of particularly
beautiful samples of minerals
and precious stones
Minerals from the first hall
In case A1 is a unique collection of smithsonites from Lavrion, with various colours and shapes, including a smithsonite stalactite about 60 cm long, which may be the only one of its kind in the world.
Case A2 contains metallic minerals, including some remarkable antimonite crystals 15 cm long from Shikoku in Japan; a magnetite crystal 10 cm long from Franklin, New Jersey, USA; pyrite crystals with points of up to 15 cm from Stratoni in Halkidiki; and a sample about 15 cm long with 1 cm long pyrargyrite crystals on quartz from Freiberg, Saxony.
Case A3 contains minerals from Lavrion, outstanding among which is a 30 cm sample with needle-shaped crystals of the very rare mineral serpierite, a 50 cm sample with adamite crystals on smithsonite, crystals of cuprite up to 1 cm together with malachite and azurite, and finally aggregates of annabergite crystals up to 1 cm long together with calcite
Case A4 contains silicates, including varieties of quartz, kyanite and staurolite from the Swiss Alps. Case A5, with carbonate minerals, has samples of azurite from Bisbee, Arizona, and malachite from the former Soviet Union.
Case A6 contains aquamarine crystals (variety of beryl) of exceptional transparency and purity, from the Nertschink region of southeastern Siberia. Among them is a transparent crystal 18 cm high, and another, deep blue crystal 10 cm high ingrown with topaz crystals 3 cm.
In Case A7 with minerals from the Urals, there is an outstanding sample of perovskite 25 cm long, with crystals up to 3 cm, from the Achmatovsk region. Also crystals of diopside up to 4 cm long on calcite, and andradite crystals of a brownish red colour 3 cm in size, together with chlorite. The rare specimen of crocoite with crystals 2 cm long, comes from Beresovsk near the city of Ekaterinburg, Russia.
There are also precious stones the like of which adorn only the largest mineralogical collections in the world, such as a sample with blue topazes up to 5 cm long with smoky quartz from the Murinska region of the Urals, a 5-cm triple alexandrite crystal from the emerald mines at Malyshevo in the Tokovaya region of the Urals and a sample of pegmatite 20 cm in size with zircon crystals up to 3 cm long from Miask in the Ilmen mountain region. The exhibits in the first hall are supplemented by five large samples which have been placed on pedestals: a gypsum crystal from Lavrion, a quartz crystal 50 cm long from Minas Gerais in Brazil, a sample about 80 cm long with crystals of sphalerite up to 10 cm long from Chalkidiki, a sample with garnet crystals from Serifos, and a sample of wollastonite and andradite from Thrace.