History of the Czech Museum of Silver

The contemporary Museum is successor to one of the oldest museum associations in Bohemia - archaeological association Wocel, founded in 1877. The association came into existence with its mission to take care of historically and artistically valuable documents and monuments of Kutná Hora region. In the first years of its existence, it focused on saving and puristic adaptation of dominant buildings of the town (St. Barbara Church, the Stone House). It went ahead with rich publication and research activities. Perpetual collection-forming activity of the Wocel association laid foundations of one of the richest museum collections in Bohemia.

The association did not have its own exhibition rooms until 1902 – in the Stone House. Another important building of the Museum – gothic Hrádek – was acquired for the Museum in 1938. The post war years brought with them legal changes and the association was incorporated into a newly established municipal museum. In the second half of the 1950s, exposition in the Stone House was reinstalled, reconstruction of Hrádek - in which new exhibition rooms of the Mining Museum were build - was started and the Tyl Native House and for a while also the Jenewein Gallery were incorporated.

In 1959, the Museum passed to administration of the District National Committee and became a methodical center for museums of the Central Bohemia, especially in branch of medieval history, geology and mining technique. The main focus of the collection-forming and exhibition activity was still kept on history of Kutná Hora as a royal mining town and seat of the central royal mint, history of medieval mining technique, geology, mineralogy and numismatic, as determined by the role of Kutná Hora in the history of the Bohemian lands.

In the holdings of the Museum (since 2003 administered by the Regional Authority of Central Bohemia and officially labelled the Czech Museum of Silver) large collections of handcraft, art, ethnography, but above all of numismatic and geology along with many unique exhibits connected to mining, smelting and minting are stored.