Geological Museum

Located in the upper floors of the geology faculty of the university, this huge room contains several kilometres of fossils, rocks and gems – a veritable treasure chest of geological finds. The precious and semiprecious stones will certainly have you gawking at Mother Nature’s handiwork: sparkling amethyst crystals (one from the Altai mountains that is 1.5m long!); huge chunks of malachite from the Urals; and a gorgeous gypsum ‘rose’ from Astrakhan. Also on display are prehistoric rocks and fossils, dinosaur fragments, animal skulls and mammoth tusks. The centrepiece of the museum is a huge map of the Soviet Union made entirely of precious gems. The winner of the Paris World Exposition Grand Prix in 1937, this 26.6-sq-metre, 3.2-tonne mosaic took more than 700 people to create, combining amethysts, diamonds, granite, rubies and other gems from 500 different places in the USSR. This masterpiece was on display in St George’s Hall in the Hermitage for 34 years. There’s a similarly constructed hammer and sickle nearby.