The textbook discusses current problems of modern mineralogical crystallography, which make up the main content of university lecture courses and are developed in many Russian and foreign scientific centers. It is shown how the use of advanced physicochemical methods contributes to the expansion of scientific ideas about the real structures of minerals and nature-like compounds, about the structural conditioning of their physical properties, about the forms of concentration of chemical elements in earth shells, about the conditions of crystallogenesis, about structural transformations in deep geospheres, as well as about the connections between structural types and their interpretation based on modern concepts.