The Royal Alberta Museum, or the Provincial Museum of Alberta, is housed in a squat, sprawling, monolithic modern building surrounded by green space overlooking the city's extensive North Saskatchewan River Valley. In keeping with its mandate to assist Albertans in appreciating and understanding the area's cultural and natural heritage and to tell the story of Alberta, its permanent exhibits are, for the most part, local-centric, offering visitors a glimpse into the diverse ecosystems and rich native cultural heritage that make up the province of Alberta.
Natural History Gallery at the Royal Alberta Museum
With its well-stocked Bug Room, glittering Treasures of the Earth gallery and beautifully eerie Bird Gallery, the Natural History Gallery is both the Royal Alberta Museum's crowd pleaser and crown jewel. In the Bug Room, you can view terrariums populated with live insects from all four sides, getting glimpses of international bugs such as the Bird-Eating Tarantula, Tailless Whipscorpions and an array of stick insects munching happily on blackberry leaves. Not all the resident creepy-crawlies are still moving: the squeamish might be happier seeing the meticulously and artistically curated butterflies, safely pinned behind glass.
The Treasures of the Earth gallery displays impressive mineral and gem samples from the four corners of the earth, including a selection of stones sensitive to ultraviolet light, some examples of meteorites and cases of dazzling cut gemstones. And in the Bird Gallery, visitors can appreciate a vast array of feathered friends frozen in flight alongside a large collection of bird eggs from around the world.
RAM's Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture
Spanning 11,000 years of history, the Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture is an ambitious attempt to lead visitors through North American aboriginal history from the Ice Age to today. The entirety of First Nations' cultural heritage is presented temporally, from nomadic bison hunting thousands of years ago through the ages to colonial times and the lasting hardships suffered by native peoples in the present, explored via an array of film, sound, lighting, artifacts, aboriginal interpreters and interactive computers.
The Royal Alberta Museum's Wild Alberta Gallery
In the Wild Alberta Gallery, patrons experience a new spin on some longtime museum residents. Dioramas that have been signature pieces of the museum's repertoire for ages have been dynamically reworked to offer exciting views of the wild based on the latest environmental research. The exhibits include a recreation of a recently burned forest, aquariums of live fish native to our area, a comprehensive, multi-sensory wetlands diorama and a model mountain cave where visitors can pass beneath a real waterfall.
Getting to the Royal Alberta Museum
The museum is located at 12845-102nd Avenue. Parking is free although not particularly ample, and for those using public transit, the museum lies on two of the city's more frequent bus routes, the 1 and the 120.
More Information on the RAM
For locals who plan to visit the Royal Alberta Museum often, buying a Mammoth Pass offers great savings. In addition to unlimited admission, passholders are also privy to a discount at both the onsite cafe and gift shop, on special event tickets, and at other provincially owned museums and historic sites.
Current hours and admission rates can be found at the Royal Alberta Museum's official website. Alternately, call (780) 453-9100 for more information.
KSC101
Join the Conversation