MUSEUM OF MINERALOGY AND PETROGRAPHY - ESPACE IZIS
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Greeted by a giant granite pot, the visitor plunges into the origins of the planet. On 3 levels, 3 000 minerals and 500 petrographic rocks for a voyage from the Urals to Limousin, passing through Madagascar and Saudi Arabia. Local mining production (gold, wolfram, uranium, kaolin) is also represented. In the lower room, the most imposing rocks appear to float in space. On the first floor, minerals are classified by family and scientific category. The space Jean Ventenat (the name of the former teacher) presents the collection of the latter: more than 1 600 specimens including exceptional parts from the Ambazac Mountains, the old mine of Chaillac (in the Indre) and all the Limousin, gathered for over 50 years. In a very different area, the museum also opened a space dedicated to the humanist photographer Izis refugee in Ambazac during World War II. Sixty-one of his photographs are exhibited. It also discovered its reconstituted laboratory as well as the portraits of the Resistance resistance, photographed by Izis in 1944.
