Natural History Museum

About Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum has stood since 1895 in a building constructed especially for it, on Strada Cetății, at the edge of Sibiu's Upper Town. The Transylvanian Society for Natural Sciences, founded in 1849 by Saxon intellectuals, had amassed ever larger collections, and towards the end of the 19th century it no longer had anywhere to keep them. Work on the new building began in the autumn of 1894 to the design of the architect C. W. Fr. Maetz, and it was inaugurated on 12 May 1895.

The building is in Late Italian Renaissance style, with a basement, a ground floor and an upper floor, a yellow façade with exposed brickwork, a columned portico at the entrance and the year 1894, in Roman numerals, under the cornice; it was renovated between 2006 and 2008. Since 1957 the museum has been a department of the Brukenthal National Museum. The permanent exhibition, opened in December 2007, is built from three-dimensional dioramas, with sound and light that follow the day–night cycle in each environment shown. The collections exceed one million items.

Information verified on 23 October 2026.

Good to know before you go

Getting there

By car: Sibiu is on the A1 motorway; from Cluj-Napoca it is ~180 km (~2 hours 15 minutes on the A10 and A1), from Brașov ~145 km on the DN1 (~2 hours 30 minutes), and from Bucharest ~270 km on the A1 and the DN7 through the Olt Valley (~4 hours). The museum is on Strada Cetății, at the edge of the historic centre, ~400 m from the Great Square (Piața Mare), where car access is restricted: leave the car in one of the car parks around the centre and walk.

Public transport: from Sibiu railway station it is a 20–25 minute walk through the centre, or you can take a Tursib bus to the central area; from the Great Square the museum is a few minutes' walk. From Sibiu airport (~5 km) there is a bus and taxis.

Where to park

Spaces on the streets around the historic centre are paid, at a machine, by SMS or in an app, and there are few of them. Public car parks with a barrier, such as Piața Teatrului or Cazarma 90, are 5–10 minutes' walk away. In summer, at weekends and on festival days they fill up quickly.

Fees & discounts

Adult ticket 20 lei; pensioners 10 lei; pupils, students, Euro 26 card holders and people with a medium or mild disability 5 lei. The single ticket for all the sections of the Brukenthal National Museum, valid for 48 hours, costs 120 lei (adults). Temporary exhibitions have separate tickets, between 10 and 50 lei. Admission is free for pre-school children, for holders of ICOM cards or press cards, and on the first Thursday of each month for pensioners and Sibiu residents; Euro 26 card holders under 30 get in free on the 26th of the month. Guided tours of the exhibitions, in Romanian or English, cost 200 lei for 60 minutes and must be requested at least 48 hours in advance at [email protected].

Rules

The visit is self-guided or with a guide on request. Professional photography and filming are charged (for example, 500 lei per hour inside the museum for individuals). Do not touch the exhibits and follow the instructions of the gallery staff.

Facilities

sales point with the museum's publications and products · online tickets · garden with dinosaur models · guided tours on request