Visit the Karkonosze Museum in Jelenia Góra - a pearl of Sudetenland culture and crafts

The beginnings of the museum

In 1889, thanks to donations from members of the RGV Society (Riesengebirgsverein), the first museum collections were created. At first, the exhibits were kept in the Royal Gymnasium, and later in several other locations. The breakthrough came in 1914, when the new museum building was officially opened at today's Jana Matejki Street 28. The design of the building was prepared by Carl Grosser (a German architect, active in Lower Silesia), and the initiator and main organizer of the facility was Hugo Seydel - a passionate fan of the art and culture of the region.

Collections and activities

From the very beginning, the museum has been collecting exhibits related to everyday life, art, folk art, crafts and the nature of the Karkonosze Mountains. The museum collections include glass products, guild objects, religious art and townspeople's souvenirs. The stylised interior of a village cottage and original equipment from the region have survived to this day.

Artistic glass has a special place in the museum's collection. Since the 1960s, the institution has specialised in collecting and presenting glass products, both historical and contemporary. Thanks to the efforts of Mieczysław Buczyński - a long-time curator and head of the Glass Department, the museum's collections in this field have achieved European rank - today they number over 9 thousand exhibits.

Post-war history

After the end of World War II, the museum began operating as a municipal and then a regional institution. Valuable works of art were stored here, including paintings by Jan Matejko, found by Prof. Stanislaw Lorenz in 1945. The museum changed its name several times until it was given the status of a District Museum in 1975, and its structure was expanded to include other branches.

Karkonosze Museum today

The Karkonosze Museum in Jelenia Góra is a living medium of culture and an attractive treasury of museum objects related to the history, culture and art of Jelenia Góra and the Karkonosze region from the time of the first documented traces of settlement in this area in the Stone and Bronze Age, through the Middle Ages to the present day. The attractive permanent exhibition, enriched with multimedia, computer games and films, includes the following parts: archaeological, historical, ethnographic and artistic. A special place among the exhibitions is occupied by the presentation of the collection of artistic glass, referring to the oldest glass-making traditions of the region, dating back to the 10th-11th centuries. The collection of artistic glass in the Karkonosze Museum, presenting the development of glass production, contains unique artistic objects created over the centuries and is today the largest in Poland and one of the most important collections of this type in Europe. A specific complement to the glass exhibition is the glassworks operating at the museum - the Glass Laboratory, where demonstrations of glass melting, glass forming, workshops, educational classes and temporary exhibitions take place.

The Karkonosze Museum in Jelenia Góra, through its mutually complementary exhibition, scientific, educational and publishing activities, is an exceptional cultural and tourist showcase of the region.

Branches of the Karkonosze Museum:
I. Bolków Castle Museum
II. Museum of History and Military
III. Carl and Gerhart Hauptmann's House in Szklarska Poręba