Folk Architecture Museum – Ethnographic Park in Olsztynek
Medals can be purchased at the entrance near the ticket offices!
The origins of the Folk Architecture Museum – Ethnographic Park in Olsztynek date back to 1909, when a decision was made in Königsberg, then the capital of East Prussia, to establish a museum of rural architecture.
The site of the Königsberg Zoological Garden was chosen as its headquarters. The development plan was to relocate the objects most characteristic of each of the regions that made up East Prussia to the museum site. Due to the poor condition of the buildings to be relocated, it was decided to build copies. Between 1910 and 1913, around 20 objects from the 18th to 19th centuries were built, representing residential, religious, industrial and farm buildings. There were also two archaeological sites on the museum grounds.
In 1937, due to the limited area of the Königsberg Zoological Garden, it was decided to move the objects to Olsztynek, in the vicinity of which was the Mausoleum of the Reich President, Field Marshal Paul Hindenburg, and which became the site of numerous excursions from Germany. The rural architecture museum was intended to increase the attractiveness of the area. The relocation was carried out between 1938 and 1942, but it was not possible to move all the buildings. Of the original layout, 12 buildings survived.
After the war, work began to secure the buildings. The work was carried out under the supervision of the Provincial Conservator of Monuments in Olsztyn. At the end of the 1950s expansion of the museum began. In 1962 it was renamed the Ethnographic Park, which functioned as a branch of the Mazury Museum in Olsztyn. In 1969 the Ethnographic Park acquired the status of an independent institution under the name of the Folk Architecture Museum-Ethnographic Park. In 1985 two buildings in the centre of Olsztynek were incorporated into its organisational structure: the Exhibition Hall in the former Evangelical Church and a tower on the line of the town’s defensive walls, which now houses a museum devoted to the life and work of Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongowiusz – a defender of the Polish language and Polish cultural tradition in Masuria.
Since 1998, the museum has been a cultural institution of the Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship Self-Government, and in 2008 it was entered in the State Register of Museums kept by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.
The museum currently has an area of 94 hectares. It has a rich collection of movable and immovable museum artefacts. They are gathered in 74 objects of large and small rural architecture from Warmia, Mazury, Powiśle and Little Lithuania, of various functions, construction and design. They include residential buildings, religious buildings, farm buildings and industrial buildings. The buildings are furnished with exhibits showing traditional working methods and rituals in the countryside in the 19th and 20th centuries. The museum’s collection of material culture and folk art exceeds 10,000 items.
The Museum owns many animal species, including white-backed and Polish red cattle, Polish ponies, Polish Cold-Blooded Horses of the Sztum type, ponies, Skuddy sheep, goats and several varieties of poultry.
