In May 2003, the Etna Volcanological Museum was opened. It is housed in the historic house of Mario Gemmellaro (1773-1839), a volcanologist who was awarded a gold medal by the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1829 for demonstrating that Mount Etna is actually a collection of small volcanoes. The Regional Province of Catania, eager to promote the volcano as a tourist destination for the island, has decided to dedicate a museum to this "Mountain": a place in which to explore its mysteries, enjoy its beauty and share its "myth". The structure of the museum is divided into two sections: "Documentation Centre" and "Education". The "Documentation Centre" is inside a wooden building that houses a rich collection of photographs and large-scale photographs depicting the different evolutionary phases of the eruptions of the last twenty years, as well as a scale model of the area around Etna. The "Educational" section, on the other hand, is located inside an old 19th-century farmhouse, where it is possible to marvel at various lava samples, such as slag, haematite crystals, sulphur crystals, silicates, volcanic bombs and many other products of volcanic origin.
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