Mineral museum of Lavrio, Geological museum in Lavrio, Greece

The Mineral Museum of Lavrio occupies a 19th-century building that once processed ore materials. The collection displays around 740 mineral samples representing approximately 220 different mineral varieties found in this mining region.

The Lavrio region served as a major mining center since ancient times, with its silver deposits playing a crucial role in Athens' economy and military power. The museum was established in the 1980s to document this mining heritage and the area's mineralogical riches.

The collection includes lead "turtles" made for sale, their moulds, and silver coins of ancient Athens from the 5th–4th centuries BC, called "Lavrion owls" after Aristophanes. Visitors also see miners' tools and, outside, large slag blocks once used in the port of Lavrio.

The museum opens only on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 12:00, so plan your visit within that narrow window. It occupies the former gatehouse of the ore-washing complex, a small building that survived the 1970 demolition of the surrounding industrial structures.

More than 610 mineral species have been identified in the Lavrio subsoil, about 16% of all known minerals, which earned the district the name "an inexhaustible natural mineral and chemical laboratory". Several species were first described here, among them laurionite, serpierite, ktenasite, georgiadesite, thorikosite, kamarizaite and annabergite.