The National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History is Moldova’s oldest museum, founded in 1889 out of a Bessarabian agricultural and industrial exhibition. It occupies a distinctive Moorish-revival building designed by Vladimir Țiganco, completed in 1905 and opened to the public the following year. The collections amount to roughly 135,000 items, and the permanent display covers more than 2,000 square metres, moving through geology, flora and fauna to Moldovan rural life, crafts and costume. Its best-known exhibit is the reconstructed skeleton of a Deinotherium, a prehistoric relative of the elephant excavated in southern Moldova. A botanical garden and vivarium adjoin the building. Admission is charged, and temporary exhibitions run alongside the permanent galleries.