Opening hours: Closed Mondays and public holidays; open Tuesday-Saturday, 8am-4pm, Sundays 10am-4pm; June-September, Sundays, Thursdays and Saturdays 10am-6pm.
The Museum of Elblag is housed in the buildings of the first Polish arts and humanities secondary school, established in the sixteenth century on the former premises of the Teutonic Order's settlement and castle dating from the thirteenth century.
Opened in 1954, the Museum collects Pomeranian history and art objects, mostly from the Elblag area and, to a lesser extent, from the countries of Northern Europe. Among its holdings is an interesting collection of Baroque Elblag (Elbing) furniture decorated with intarsia, sixteenth through eighteenth century pewter vessels, pieces from Pomeranian goldsmiths' workshops as well as Elblag and Dutch white ceramics decorated with cobalt and including tableware, tiles and complete stoves. The history of Elblag is told through a collection of seventeenth through nineteenth century coat-of-arms cartouches of the city's patriciate, archive records, old prints, city views and maps, twelfth through fifteenth century military objects as well as documents and objects related to the population resettled to this area from the eastern parts of the Polish state in 1945-7, following their annexation by the Soviet Union during World War II.
In 1982 archeologists made a remarkable discovery on the shores of the Druzno Lake near Elblag. They found the legendary Truso - the early medieval port settlement described by Alfred the Great, the king of England, in the ninth century. Populated by Prussians, Slavs and Scandinavians, Truso had maintained trade contacts with major European and Oriental centres, as witnessed by numerous West-European and Arabian coins, Oriental beads, West-European wine jugs and other finds on the site. Archeologists have also uncovered traces of a fire and pieces of weapons and have thus helped to solve the riddle of the sudden collapse of this trading emporium by endorsing the argument that Truso had been destroyed as a result of a pirate raid in the late ninth or early tenth century. An archeological open-air museum is now being put together on the site, and the mock-up of the port as well as the excavated objects may be seen at the Truso: Archeological Treasures permanent exhibition at the Museum of Elblag.
Other permanent exhibitions at the Museum include The History of Elblag: 1237-1950; Sacred Art of the Thirteenth through Eighteenth Centuries; Decorative Arts: Furniture, Ceramics, Pewterer and Goldsmith Crafts.
Muzeum Archeologiczno Historyczne w Elblągu
ul. Bulwar Zygmunta Augusta 11
82-300 Elbląg
Region: warmińsko-mazurskie
Phone: (+48 55) 232 72 73
Phone/Fax: (+48 55) 232 43 17
WWW: www.muzeum.elblag.pl
Email: muzeumel@elblag.com.pl