Radom Village Museum in Radom

The open-air ethnographic museum in Radom, which is accustomed to being colloquially called the Radom Village Museum, is an impressive collection of buildings, as well as the products of folk culture. It is hard to find a similar place in all Poland. There are cottages, mills and the manor house, and also the old fire station. The open-air ethnographic museum takes up an area of 32.5 hectares, which houses 80 buildings of the old-style rural construction type and 22 more are waiting in storage for assembly. The entire museum is situated in a beautiful corner of Radom: it is full of tall old trees, nearby there is a forest, and through the centre of the museum runs a small river – the Kosówka.

The interiors of the cottages have been restored thoroughly and meticulously, using old equipment and household appliances, and home furnishings – all originals with an historical pedigree. For example, there is the small cottage of a herbalist, who got this cottage in exchange for service to a wealthy Master, which is a modest building with furniture and a stove from the old days, decorated in the middle with bouquets of herbs and medicinal plants. The museum is now in possession of a huge collection of mobile exhibits, each of which deserves attention. Among the more than 16,000 exhibits you will find arranged in collections vehicles, agricultural machinery, hives and beekeeping tools, textiles and folk art. All are subject to scientific development and maintenance.

From a short history of the museum, you can learn that in 1972 the social committee for its construction was founded. It acquired land for implementation of the project in the Radom district Pruszaków. The Radom Village Museum was founded on 31 December 1976. The first building transferred to the museum was a historic granary court from Wilków. Also at the beginning, the apiarian-beekeeping museum was created. Then, in 1980, the official opening of the Museum took place.

Currently the open-air museum, in addition to the great collections, has a huge educational offer for children and young people. A centre of museum education has been created here, where classes are held using a modern range of audiovisual media and the Internet. An important part is environmental education, using the museum nature trail. Along the Kosówka river, flowing through the grounds of the museum, mills, a sawmill and a homestead from Solec on the Vistula have been erected. With the participation of EU funds an amphitheatre has been built, as have new tourism infrastructure and a complex of historical buildings connected with the riverside economy of the inhabitants of the former Radom Land.