The collection, established by Director Pietracaprina, includes minerals, rocks and scientific equipment collected at the Cabinet of Mineralogy and Geology since the late nineteenth century, with the first materials collected by Domenico Lovisato, and merged in the early 1960s at the Institute of Mineralogy and Geology. It is named after Aurelio Serra, one of the leading scholars of Sardinian mineralogical aspects, who was active for over fifty years at the research facility. The collection is divided into the sections: mineralogical, geological, pedological and paleontological. The size of the collections is about 1,000 pieces of mineralogical interest, 300 from the geological field and 200 from the paleontological field, as well as several pedological profiles mainly concerning the soils of Sardinia. The museum, with mainly educational purposes, includes samples of effusive and intrusive rocks, fossils, monoliths of soils, samples of marbles and rocks, and samples of sands from beaches of the island and the Sahara Desert. The minerals on display are of considerable scientific importance either because they are rare (e.g., covellite), or because they come from long-closed mines (such as silver and fluorite from the Sulcis and Sarrabus mines), or finally because of their special crystallographic characteristics (e.g., fluorite). Some ancient microscopes are on display in the museum; there is also an important collection of books and geological maps.
