Permanent exhibitions
The permanent exhibitions of the Ostrava Museum are based on the museum’s collections and its areas of focus. They showcase art-historical collections, the history of Ostrava and the history of mining, ethnography, archaeology, paleontology, geology, mineralogy, and the nature and landscape of the Ostrava region.
The section dedicated to art history collections features the Ostrava Museum’s most valuable exhibits. Here you will find old prints, wooden sculptures, paintings, and statues. The section on crafts includes tinware, clocks and watches, glass, and porcelain.
A separate room is dedicated to the military collection—hunting, military, and Oriental weapons, as well as bladed weapons, target daggers, pistols, and revolvers.
The history of Ostrava, from the city’s founding in 1267 to 1989, is marked by key events that took place there. These are captured in period photographs and unique items from the collection. Archaeological finds from the center of Moravian Ostrava evoke the city’s earliest past, while the birth of industry is symbolized, among other things, by Otto von Bollhagen’s wide-format canvas Vítkovice, dating from 1911. The exhibition also presents events in Ostrava during the 19th and 20th centuries—the periods of both world wars as well as the city after 1945, including its political and social life, architecture, culture, education and public enlightenment, sports, and leisure.
The next section features an ethnography exhibition. In addition to items from the folk art collection, audiovisual elements depict the festivals and customs that are still observed in the Ostrava region today.
Also tied to the city’s history is the mining exhibition, featuring a unique collection of mining lamps and measuring instruments. A highlight is an interactive map of the city from 1928, which shows the towers of all the shafts during the heyday of the mining industry.
The natural history section showcases the natural environment of the Ostrava region, including its geology and mineralogy. On display are examples of the region’s mineral wealth—black coal, unique fossils from Václav Šusta’s Carboniferous paleontological collection, the region’s unique mineralogical and petrographic specimens, and a mineralogical system. The oldest archaeological finds serve as a link between the two sections of the natural history exhibits. The exhibit on the living nature and landscape of the Ostrava region (agricultural landscape, floodplain forests in the Odra River basin, forests of the Ostrava region, rivers, ponds, and meadows, urban landscape) features exhibits from botany, zoology, and entomology.
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