Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona

The Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona is an institution founded over 140 years ago whose natural heritage collections in the fields of mineralogy, petrology, palaeontology, zoology and botany comprise more than three million specimens. This valuable heritage has been enriched year by year thanks to specimens obtained through donations from private individuals, agreements with the Zoo and Catalonia’s natural parklands, and also through the Museum’s own research work. Museum centres: The Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona is housed in different buildings located in three strategic areas of the city: Ciutadella Park, Montjuïc Park and the Forum Park. The first of these sites is home to the Museu Martorell and the Laboratori de Natura in the building known as Castell dels Tres Dragons, while Montjuïc is home to the Jardí Botànic and the Jardí Botànic Històric. The main building is situated in the Forum Park, and houses the facilities that are used mainly for public programmes: exhibitions, workshops, conferences, media resource centre, etc. Museum Science Area: This comprises the Collections and Research departments and the Documentation Centre, and all the activities undertaken by them, that is, conservation, description and study of the natural and documentary heritage of their resources. In fact, everything that goes on at the Museum would be pointless were it not for its fundamental, primary purpose which is to safeguard and preserve that heritage. The collections are kept in store and are preserved and studied by biologists and geologists who document them (taking inventory, cataloguing, computerising, and publishing databases) and make them available for the scientific community. They use the different laboratories –the preparation lab, the restoration and preventive conservation lab, and the technological lab– for these purposes. The Museum participates in research projects with other public institutions such as the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones científicas) and national and foreign universities, while also developing its own projects connected with the collections it holds and with objectives relating to the local territory. The Documentation Centre places the information resources it administers at the disposal of the Museum experts and the public