Kardzhali Regional History Museum

Overview

The Regional Historical Museum in Kardzhali has existed since 1963. It is located in an ancient three-storey building, an architectural monument of culture, built in the early 1920s and originally intended as a Muslim seminary. In the early 1980s the building was adapted for museum purposes according to a project by architect Elena Kondeva. The museum contains over 45,000 exhibits tracing life in the Eastern Rhodopes from ancient times to the early 20th century, collected in three collections, thematically divided into departments "Archeology", "Nature", "Ethnography". The Stanka Dimitrova Art Gallery also functions next to the regional museum, which is housed in the building of a former konak. The Archeology Department is located on the first floor of the museum and has 9 halls and a total of 600 m2 of exhibition space. It preserves archeological finds from the Neolithic to the late Bulgarian Middle Ages. The department presents a reconstruction of a prehistoric home with collections of tools, prehistoric idol sculpture and household items. Also on display are Thracian votive tablets, bronze sculptures, sgraffito pottery, medieval coins, jewelry and church utensils. The Nature Department is housed in four halls on the second floor of an exhibition area of ​​300 m2. The department exhibits natural samples of living and non-living nature of the Eastern Rhodopes, herbariums of rare and protected plants, fossils of marine life, collections of ore minerals, non-metallic raw materials, geodes and precious stones. Photos of some of the natural landmarks of the region are shown: "Stone Wedding", "Stone Mushrooms", "Petrified Forest", "Broken Mountain", "Devil's Bridge" and others. The Ethnography Department is located on the top, third floor. Life in the Eastern Rhodopes from the end of the 19th century to the 1950s is presented on an area of ​​600 m2 in 9 halls. The department contains reconstructions of a dairy, a coal, papukchi and abadji workshop; exhibited items related to the main livelihoods of the population in the region, as well as traditional folk costumes and jewelry.