The Karkonosze Museum

The modern Karkonosze Museum is an effort of many years of work, which began back in 1880, when a group of Karkonosze lovers established the Karkonosze Association in Jelenia Góra.
Its goals included, among others, building and maintaining roads and tourist trails, calling the guard of protection of nature, keeping a library, as well as organizing tourist inns for youth.

The current bilding that holds the museum, was created between 1912 and 1914 as the Karkonosze Association Museum. Over the years, its collection was growing. World War II and the time right after its end was a period, when the museum was just a repository of pieces of art and evidence of the material culture of Sudety. Sadly, most of them were exported to other museums all around Poland. But the others were reorganized in the 1950s.

Later, the Fight and Work Museum was established, but it was closed down in the early 1990s.
In 1995, another division of the museum was established in Szklarska Poręba.

Currently, since 2001, the museum can be visited under the name of the Karkonosze Museum in Jelenia Góra.

The job of the museum is to collect, conservate and preserve artefacts, as well as make them available for visitors. They are presented on theme-based permanent and time-limited exhibits. Among the permanent exhibits, visitors should pay special attention to the artistic glass exhibit, which is the largest one in Poland and one of the largest exhibits of artistic glass in Europe. Another incredibly interesting exhibit is the country cottage, exposed in 1914 and based upon a typical Karkonosze cottage from the second half of the 18th century.