The "Don Felipe de Borbon y Grecia" Museum of Mining History boasts an ample testimony to the mineral wealth of Spain and the rest of Europe since the eighteenth century, as well as the link between the School of Mining Engineers and mining expeditions.
The building that houses the museum is the Escuela Superior de Ingenieros de Minas y Energia de Madrid, the city’s Mining and Energy Engineering College, built by Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, between 1884 and 1893, and it follows the same lines as other buildings designed by Bosco, such as the Ministry of Agriculture and the Palacio de Velázquez in Retiro Park. The building is rectangular and laid out around a central courtyard. The lateral walls are decorated with ceramic panels that allude to the physical sciences and mining. The school has an extremely valuable historic library on geology and mining.
Much of their mineralogical pieces come from donations or from major mines in operation throughout the nineteenth century (and part of the twentieth), but most are inactive today. With real scientific value because of their rarity or quality, the minerals as well as their own history tell the story of how they were found, studied by engineers who contributed decisively to Spanish geology and mining.
In addition to a wide variety of minerals, this museum houses several collections devoted to archaeological findings from different eras, fossils, the skulls of bears, mining lamps, theodolites, trilobites, gems, models and the Alajardin collection of minerals.
The activities on offer at the museum included guided tours of the Mina Museo Marcelo Jorissen, a reproduction of a mine created in the 1960s so that school pupils could get practical hands-on experience of mining. It is temporarily closed to the public for safety reasons.
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