MUM - Luigi Celleri Mineral Museum in San Piero

The Luigi Celleri Mineralogical and Gemological Museum, opened in 2013 but formally established in January 2014, was created to collect a rich collection of minerals and crystals from the San Piero in Campo area and samples from the mining sector of eastern Elba.

The MUM has large exhibition halls of minerals and crystals, a gallery dedicated to granite and the techniques used for its extraction and processing, a mineral gallery, and other spaces for laboratories and exhibitions. The first floor also houses a functional space for projections and audiovisual education.

Luigi Celleri

The museum is dedicated to Luigi Celleri (1828-1900), a citizen of San Piero, who discovered many of the most famous Elban mineral samples. Celleri dedicated himself to mineralogical research of western Elba both in collaboration with Raffaello Foresi and on behalf of Giorgio Roster and Bista Toscanelli. Later, he worked on mineralogical research for Pilade Del Buono, for the establishment of the Mineralogical Museum in the Demidoff Gallery at the Napoleonic villa of San Martino. Thanks to these researches, important mineralogical finds were made at the time, such as gommoid quartz (in the Palombaia area) and wollastonite specimens (in the Cavoli area).

On the ground floor, there is the garden MUM, a small garden where some plants characteristic of the flora of the Island of Elba are cultivated: from the beaches to the rocky coasts, rising up to the edges of the woods, with interesting insights into the medicinal use of some of them.

The mineral exhibition area is located on the first floor and is organized into 12 display cases. One of these showcases contains historical samples of Campo minerals from museums around the world. There is also an exhibition space dedicated to gems, made available by several private donors, many of which come from the collection of Prof. Federico Pezzotta, curator of the Mineralogical Museum of Milan. In 2015, new minerals were added from the private collection of a great mineralogy enthusiast, Engineer Pini, donated by the family to the museum.

Infoelba suggests: The museum houses some important samples of Elbaite, an elegant tourmaline first discovered in 1825 in Elba (from which it takes its name).

Also worth appreciating is the section dedicated to the exhibition of iron minerals, provided by the Elba Island Mining Park, and a room dedicated to the exhibition of rocks from which the main minerals of the island are extracted.