Museum of Napajedla

Napajedla Museum is closely connected with the Museum Association and dates back to the end of the 19th century. The first impulses for the establishment of the museum were the ethnographic and industrial exhibition Svatopluk’s Celebration in 1894 and the exhibition on the occasion of the opening of the new town hall in 1904.

However, the museum itself was not established at that time. A more favorable situation arose only in 1925 with the establishment of a museum commission at the municipal council, which in 1930 was transformed into the Museum and Archaeological Association. The chairman of the association was Jindřich Bauer and the managing director was Vladislav Bachmánek. The association organized meetings and lectures, developed collecting activities and conducted its own archaeological research. In 1932, the association already had 172 members. A year later it was accepted into the Czechoslovak Union of museums in Prague.

The association has 2,243 collection items from the field of archeology, numismatics, ethnography and history in its holdings. Although the association had 247 members after World War II, it was abolished by the new political establishment and in 1955 the Napajedla Museum became part of the Regional Museum in Gottwaldov (now Zlín). The tradition of museology in Napajedlí resumed in 1992, when Jaroslav Toufar, Sr. initiated the creation of Friends Club Napajedel, later renamed the Museum Club. Those interested in the history of the city gathered in it and tried to capture the memories of witnesses and preserve available written materials and photographs.

The club organized various events, such as a conference on culture in Napajedlí and the unveiling of plaques to memorialize important Napajedla personalities – the historian Vincenc Prask and the poet R. Bojek. A significant developement was also the 100th anniversary of the promotion of Napajedel to city status in 1998, when the association advocated the creation of a new book on the history of Napajedel. However, the main goal of the club members was to rebuild the collections and open the museum.

The town of Napajedla realized the importance of the existence of its own museum. In 2012, the city built a new home for it in the former monastery of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Crosses, where the museum gradually moved. In Nový Klášter, the museum gained dignified spaces not only for expanding its own collections.

For more information about the Pilsen Region, from which this museum comes, click here and here.