Mining Museum Příbram

Mining Museum Příbram (Czech: Hornické muzeum Příbram) is a large open-air museum of mining with historical buildings and expositions of mining history and mineralogy. It is located in Příbram's Březové Hory quarter, former important Czech mining centre. It is one of the biggest museums in the Czech Republic. It was founded in 1886.

The Mining Museum Příbram follows the tradition of two past museums founded in the 19th century. Part of the collections of the factory mining museum of Příbram's mining works, especially the collections of minerals, has been open to public already since 1852. Thanks to the school director Ladislav Malý, the Regional Museum in Příbram was founded December 12, 1886. Since the early beginning, the exhibits depicting the mining history were kept there, from modern era objects to archeological finds from Celtic times.

Although both institutions existed side by side for long decades, their condition was not promoted until the major change caused by the idea of Jiří Majer, director of the mining section of the National Technical Museum (NTM) in Prague. He asked to save the major mining structures in Příbram after their closure for the mining museum. The NTM took care of the factory museum collections and obtained the former office a dwelling building at the Ševčinský Shaft (now the mineralogical exposition) as the seat of its mining branch.

Since 1963 the museum has been included into the Regional Museum in Příbram.

More buildings were selected for the museum in the 1970s, but only a small part of the plans was carried out. The museum obtained the cáchovna (registration room) close to the Ševčinský Shaft, miner's cottage and later the Ševčinský Shaft itself. Two other mines planned to be included into the museum (the St. Adalbert Shaft and the St. Anne Shaft) however deteriorate, the St. Anne Shaft Gallows Frame is destroyed as well as the listed boiler-plant in the St. Adalbert Shaft.

The situation has been changing since the early 1990s. The Ševčinský Shaft and the St. Anne Shaft were rebuilt. Museum took care of the St. Anne Shaft with a steam winder from 1914 and it bought the St. Adalbert Shaft from the pre-WWII owners, who got the building back after the fall of communist regime in Czechoslovakia. After a reconstruction, the object was open for public in 2000.

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