Santo Domingo will soon have its own amber museum. It is scheduled to open on 5 September. Sited in the Colonial City its owner, Jorge Caridad Caridad, who has worked twenty five years with the semi-precious stone is also the proprietor of one of the best amber shops in the country, Ambar Nacional. He has gathered a collection of some of the most interesting pieces and will be exhibiting these, together with explanations about the origins of amber, at the new Museo del Ambar.
The museum will be the second of its kind in the Dominican Republic. The first amber museum is in the city of Puerto Plata and is a great attraction for visitors to the North Coast.
The Santo Domingo museum is at 452, Calle Arzobispo Meriño at the corner of Restauración, near the Ruinas de San Francisco, the Alcazar, and the Plaza de España. It is housed in a restored XVII building.
The Museo del Ambar has been designed by Architect Pedro José Vega V. He was assisted by entomologist Mr Von Dieter of the Stuttgart Museum in Germany, David Grimaldi of the Museum of Natural History in New York, and Abelardo Jiménez Lambertus.
The museum will have an international hall, an audio-visual hall and a Dominican hall, as well as access to the Ambar Nacional gift shop and cafeteria. The museum explains how amber is formed, and shows photographs and samples of animals and insects encapsulated within the resin. The museum also has two MAG50 microscopes so that the public can see the structural parts of an insect that is millions of years old. There are three videos, experiments for children, murals, and many fossilized ants.