The open-air museum in Ciechanowiec is part of the Rev. Kluk Museum of Agriculture. The complex is made up of old buildings which allow you to travel back in time. The charming houses depict the idyllic landscape of the Polish countryside and allow visitors to get to know the life of the inhabitants at the time. Without modern conveniences.
The idea of creating a museum appeared in the early 1960s. Appropriate permission was granted by the then Ministry of Culture and the Arts on 17 January 1963. The documents allowed the institution to collect exhibits and create a facility.
As early as July 1964, the Social Museum of Agriculture was opened in the building of the former fire station. The naturalist associated with Ciechanowiec, Father Jan Krzysztof Kluk, became the museum’s patron. Initially, the exhibition was quite modest. The emerging institution was looking for a more impressive place for the collected exhibits. In July 1968, the Municipal National Council in Ciechanowiec passed a resolution to nationalise the Social Museum of Agriculture and decided that the new seat of the institution would be the palace and park complex in Ciechanowiec – Nowodwory.
Part of the complex is the palace of Count Starzeński, which was still a ruin in the 1960s. At the end of the decade, work began to rebuild the palace and adapt the space for museum purposes. The palace was handed over to the museum at the end of 1969. At the same time, the process of creating an open-air museum on the manor grounds was underway.
The open-air museum in Ciechanowiec now boasts over fifty historic wooden architectural buildings. The buildings were relocated from villages on the Mazovian-Podlasie borderland. Their appropriate location and exposition was the subject of research by scientists. Among others, Dr. Paweł Olszewski, Prof. Marian Pokropek, Prof. Anna Kutrzeba Pojnarowa and Kazimierz Uszyński, M.A., participated in creating the concept of the open-air museum.
The first of the buildings was moved as early as 1967. The process of moving them took more than twenty years. The buildings were arranged in three sectors. A curiosity is the water mill located here, which is still in operation.
Visitors can see nine cottages, two manor houses, two manor granaries, a smithy, a hayloft, barns, cowsheds, a windmill of the koźlak type, peasant granaries, a grove, a church with a bell tower and a vicarage.
More information and opening hours can be found on the official website of the Museum: www.muzeumrolnictwa.pl
photos: Mariusz Cieszewski / MSZ
source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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