Museo di Mineralogia e Litologia, Florence

It was Ferdinando II who employed a Dane, Niels Stensen, to integrate the Medici family's collections into one mineral collection. The Lorena family added to this, transforming it from a collection of objects to a collection which could be studied, classified and compared. In the museum there are around 35,000 mineral samples. They are divided into five sections: the "General collection" (including a topaz of 151kg and nuggets of gold, platinum and diamond), the "Regional collection of Italy" (containing 5000 minerals from the Elba), the "Meteorites section" , the "Lithological section" and the "Carved Stones". Their value is more historical and aesthetic than mineralogical. .

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