The exhibition was created in 2009 and it is situated in the historical cellars under the main building of the Kroměříž District Museum. The house, formerly known as the Chapter House or Earl’s House, was built by the Bishop of Olomouc and Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein in 1609 in the so-called mannerist style of late Renaissance, on a place of a former medieval house. The historical cellars are from late gothic and renaissance period. In the second room of the exhibition space you will stand under the original stone vaults built with quarried sandstone, completely isolated from the bustle of the street above you, surrounded by the history of the town taking you “from the mammoths to the modern era”.
There are many interesting archaeological finds and historical objects from the museum collections, including the remnants of ice-age mammoth, stone tools, bronze items and finds from discovered waste pits and old wells, medieval ceramics, glass, various artisanal items, tableware, bathroom and other household utensils, discovered historic pottery wheels and kilns, but also instruments of torture, evidence of tort law and parts of metal armour. Some extremely rare and fragile exhibits made of glass and leather are presented as perfect replicas.
Some things about the exhibition can be guessed from the names of the exhibition units: Trail back to prehistory, From a market village to a town, Crafts from the periphery, Cuisine of the bourgeois, Town enclosed within walls, Treasures hidden under the pavement, and Houses and streets of the past. There are attractive three-dimensional exhibits placed in glass cabinets, allowing for a thorough exploration of the town’s past. There are also interactive touch displays with a range of audiovisual programmes. In this way, you can “walk” the streets of the town in the past, learning all about its architectural and built development, heritage objects, and cultural history.
The basic exhibition items are accompanied by attractive model reconstructions. Besides a model of the town there is also a medieval potter’s workshop with a kiln, smoke kitchen from one of the bourgeois houses, medieval dump pit and an authentic 300-year-old water conduit found under the pavement of one of the streets in Kroměříž. Some of the “treasures” found under the pavement are also items documenting medieval literacy and small objects of applied art, medieval, renaissance, and baroque decorative stove tiles, but also actual treasures in the form of coins, jewel troves, and other valuables that the citizens hid away at times of war or other dangers. Newly you can also view a replica of a pair of men’s baroque leather boots from the 17th–18th century, made completely without any modern materials or technologies.
The History hidden under the pavement exhibition project was supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway under the EEA Financial Mechanism and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism jointly with the Zlín Region, as part of the Conservation, restoration and making accessible of the tangible cultural heritage in the Zlín Region programme.
Location of the exhibition:
• main building, historical basement cellars
Explanatory and accompanying texts:
• printed: in Czech only
• interactive displays: Czech and English
• audio panel: Czech
Publications accompanying the exhibition:
• leaflet in Czech
• leaflet in English (in production)
• Helena Chybová, Kroměříž zmizelá a znovu objevená aneb Historie ukrytá pod dlažbou města, Kroměříž 2009.
Opened:
• 1 October 2009, reinstalled in 2021
Author:
• Helena Chybová
Expert collaboration:
• Markéta Mercová, Petr Pálka
Gallery
