Mining Museum in Rožňava

Location: Košický kraj, okres Rožňava, Rožňava

GPS: N48°39'17'' E20°31'46''

The Mining Museum in Rožňava, which is more than a hundred years old, is one of three specialized mining museums in Slovakia and serves as the district museum of national history and geography. Its function is to preserve not only artifacts from the field of mining and metallurgy, but also collections from various disciplines.

Exposition focused on mining and metallurgy in Gemer is located in an impressive functional building from 1905, which according to available documents, is the oldest building built for a mining and metallurgy museum in central Europe. In the geology - mineralogy section there are interesting and precious minerals from deposit areas of Gemer. The section focused on technology in mining and metallurgy offers visitors a compact picture of the development of these disciplines primarily in the Gemer region.

The most valuable exhibits include medieval mining hand tools, a wooden pumping device used in mining, a towing chute, drilling, measuring and illuminating devices.

Mining workplaces form an independent, compact part of the exposition, from which visitors can get a concrete view of underground work conditions and methods of work of miners.

The nature exposition focused on Slovenský Kras and its surroundings presents an unusual variety of natural phenomena and beauties of the given area. It is located in a building built in 1904 as the so-called Frances`s Asylum.

A part of the exposition dedicated to non-living nature documents changes of geological features of Slovenský kras using samples of minerals, rocks, and fossils. There is remarkable documentation of surface and underground karst formation, especially Domica cave and Gombasek cave. Flora and fauna in the next section dedicated to living nature is presented through biotope communities of  swamp areas, agricultural cultivated land and areas of forests, karst and rock faces.

Historical exhibition – the presentation museum depository shows the most beautiful and precious museum exhibits from the Mining Museum collections. Their number is only limited by the museum area, and to avoid the effect of a rather stockpiled material, collections are arranged freely, with respect to individual museum disciplines and, to some extent, also with respect to the material. This layout of the presentation depositary enables arrangement of several items of the same category side by side. A good example could be the array of 11 spinning wheels of different types and material. Visitors thus have a chance to see "variations of the same topic". The exposition comprises more than 4,000 museum exhibits.

Mining Museum Gallery focuses on short-term museum and gallery exhibitions, both from its own resources and from other Slovak and foreign institutions.

The Mining Museum in Rožňava also administers a rare Art-Nouveau-style building - a functional building of Andrássy Picture Gallery in Krásnohorské Podhradie. It was built from the initiative of Dionýz Andrássy, the then-owner of the Krásna Hôrka estates. The permanent exhibition is dedicated to portrait art of the 18th and 19th century.

Source: TIC Rožňava