The collections of the East Bohemia Museum in Pardubice consist of almost 700 000 items listed under almost 205 000 separate register numbers. The collections are managed by three departments of the museum – the Archeology Department, the Science Department and the History Department.
Digitalized items from the collections can be viewed at the museum’s publication portal, the Key to the Collections.
The Archeology Department manages two separate collections – an old archeological collection plus a new archeological collection (consisting of items found during archeological research and surveys).
The head curators of the archeological collections are Mgr. Tereza Jošková and PhDr. Jan Jílek. Other curators at the Archeology Department are Mgr. Miroslava Cejpová and Mgr. Tomáš Zavoral.
The Science Department manages 10 separate collections focusing on natural history.
The museum’s botanical collection was founded in 1927 by the herbalist and teacher Emanuel Kalenský. However, it also includes numerous older items (dating back to the first half of the 19th century) which were purchased by the museum or donated by private herbalists. The collection contains mainly items from East Bohemia, though there are also items from other regions of the Czech Republic.
The curator of the collection is Mgr. Lenka Šafářová, Ph.D.
Most of the items in the collection were acquired relatively recently, from 1998 onwards. The original collections (except the mollusc shells) were transferred in their entirety to the Museum of Eastern Bohemia in Hradec Králové.
The curator of the collection is Mgr. Jan Dolanský.
Most of the items in the collection were acquired relatively recently, from 2003 onwards. The original collections were transferred in their entirety to the Museum of Eastern Bohemia in Hradec Králové. Currently the collection consists mainly of rocks and minerals documenting the diverse geology of the north-eastern part of the Bohemian massif.
The curator of the collection is Ing. Jiří Šura.
The zoological collection is one of the oldest collections belonging to the museum. Immediately after the museum’s foundation, on 30 June 1881, it purchased (for 3000 gulden) a collection of stuffed birds from the renowned taxidermist Professor Hromádka, an expert on the natural history of the Pardubice region.
The curator of the collection is Mgr. Libor Praus, Ph.D.
This small collection (316 items) includes skeletal remains of large animals dating from the early and later Quaternary period, which were mainly found in the Pardubice region. The rarest exhibits include antlers (deer, reindeer, moose), skulls (horse, aurochs), and the tusks and teeth of mammoths.
The curator of the collection is Mgr. Libor Praus, Ph.D.
The Department of History is responsible for the museum’s largest share of acquisitions and administers more than sixty collections organised by subject.
This collection documents the rural way of life and includes artefacts of traditional folk culture. Most of the items are associated with traditional agriculture and rural households, including equipment for processing agricultural products, food preparation and domestic cloth production, as well as historic clothing, furniture, parts of buildings and architectural models.
The collection is managed by Mgr. Matěj Pros.
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This collection documents specialist trades and crafts used in small-scale manufacturing, services and trade. It consists mainly of items from craft workshops, the retail sector and other trades during the first half of the 20th century – tools, semi-finished and finished products, equipment and fittings, working clothes, goods packaging, and items used for advertising.
The collection is managed by Mgr. Matěj Pros.
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This collection consists of various measures of length and volume (wet and dry) as well as weighing equipment (including various types of weights). The items have been acquired gradually since the museum’s foundation (1880). The majority of the collection dates from the 19th century, though there are also some items from the 20th century.
The collection is managed by Mgr. Matěj Pros
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The Oral History sub-collection includes recordings and transcripts of interviews relating to regional topics, significant local and national events, and individuals connected with the East Bohemian region.
Curator: Mgr. Matěj Bekera
Objects from everyday domestic life have traditionally formed part of museum collections, including those in Pardubice. In the 1960s, kitchen utensils, cookware, food and household packaging, tools for domestic handicrafts and other equipment typical of middle-class households were brought together into a specialised collection.
Curator: Mgr. Tereza Mazancová
The toy collection is one of the museum’s more recent collections, established in 1975. It includes toys dating from the second half of the nineteenth century to almost the present day. The collection is particularly notable for its diversity.
Curator: Mgr. Tereza Mazancová
Garments were among the museum’s earliest acquisitions following its establishment in 1880. Initially, the collection focused on folk costume and was later expanded to include period clothing. Until the 1960s, all textiles formed part of the ethnographic collections.
Curator: Mgr. Tereza Mazancová
This is one of the largest public coin collections in the Czech Republic. Its origins date back to the late nineteenth century, when the Museum Society in Pardubice began acquiring numismatic material comprising around 1,000 items. The collection expanded rapidly, primarily through donations, although not always systematically.
Curators: Prof. PhDr. Petr Vorel, CSc., and PhDr. Ladislav Nekvapil, Ph.D.
The collection of weapons and militaria is among the most significant of its kind in the Czech Republic, comprising 2,553 inventory numbers. Its most valuable component is a group of civilian (hunting and sporting) firearms, predominantly of European origin, many of them richly decorated.
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev
One of the smallest yet most poignant collections in the museum, comprising only 48 items related to the German occupation, concentration camps and, in particular, events in Pardubice during the period following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev
In the 1970s and 1980s, the museum was tasked with documenting the development of socialism in the Pardubice region. One result was this collection of service, company and work uniforms from the period, now frequently loaned to other museums.
It includes, for example, a complete uniform of a Public Security officer (SNB), members of the People’s Militia, Pioneer youth uniforms, as well as uniforms of Czechoslovak State Transport (ČSAD) drivers and railway workers. The collection currently comprises around 160 items.
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev
This relatively small collection (321 inventory numbers) is related to the militaria collection but extends beyond it. Its core consists of Austro-Hungarian decorations acquired after the First World War, when former soldiers often relinquished such items.
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev Mgr. Jan Tetřev
Small objects often escape visitors’ attention, but this is unfortunate in the case of badges. This collection has been developed mainly over the past thirty years and brings together badges of organisations, companies and institutions from the second half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century.
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev
The collection comprises around 210 examples of clocks and timekeeping devices. It does not form a complete chronological sequence, but includes several high-quality examples of formally distinctive clocks from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The metalwork collection is a significant part of the museum’s decorative arts holdings. It comprises more than 900 objects, predominantly made of pewter, as well as items in copper, silver, brass and other alloys. The core of the collection consists of objects acquired by the former museum society through donations and occasional purchases.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The collection includes more than 1,300 examples of porcelain, stoneware and other ceramic materials. It documents both functional and decorative production from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The furniture collection comprises around 340 items. It began to develop in the late nineteenth century, initially focusing on middle-class and folk furniture from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Over time, older and more exceptional pieces were also acquired, including finely carved late Renaissance chests.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The glass collection is the most coherent of the museum’s decorative arts collections. Its core was formed in the late 1950s and consisted of approximately 700 objects from the museum society’s holdings, including eighteenth-century cut and painted glass, as well as engraved, cut and free-blown glass objects from the nineteenth century.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The painting collection is the result of occasional acquisitions and displays considerable thematic breadth and uneven quality. It includes religious paintings, landscapes, genre scenes, still lifes and portraits.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The collection was established in the 1880s and now comprises more than 780 objects. It is dominated by folk and semi-folk religious sculpture from the nineteenth century. The most important items include a group of Baroque wood carvings.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The Lapidarium is a small collection of several dozen objects made of stone and other materials. It features a range of interesting architectural, artistic, and commemorative artefacts dating from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The main part of the collection is made up of artefacts from the 16th and 17th centuries. These include terracotta parts of buildings from the time of the Lords of Pernstein, like sections of windows and doors, as well as a collection of early modern gravestones of lesser nobles, most of whom were officials working at the Pardubice estate, and their family members. Since 2024, the collection has been on display in a permanent exhibition/open depository.
Curator: PhDr. Ladislav Nekvapil
The collection consists of both manuscript and printed sheet music from several areas of musical activity: church choirs, local choral societies (such as Pernštýn, Ludmila, Suk and the People’s Opera), and personal estates of Pardubice composers, for example Karel Moor and the Lautner family.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The collection consists primarily of European musical instruments, with a smaller number of non-European examples. According to the Sachs–Hornbostel classification, the instruments fall into four main groups: aerophones, chordophones, membranophones and idiophones.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The collection comprises approximately 1,500 registered items and includes sound carriers from the twentieth century (from the early decades through to the 1980s). Gramophone records of both domestic and foreign origin predominate.
Curator: Mgr. Pavel Tašek, Ph.D.
The manuscript collection is one of the museum’s oldest. Its origins date back to the 1880s and the activities of the Museum Society. It includes manuscripts from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries as well as more recent material, including written estates of notable figures associated with Pardubice.
Curator: Mgr. Pavel Tašek, Ph.D.
This collection comprises primarily written materials relating to notable individuals born in or associated with the Pardubice region.
Curator: Mgr. Pavel Tašek, Ph.D.
This is one of the museum’s largest and most significant collections. The oldest poster dates from the revolutionary year 1848, and the collection continues to grow.
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev
This collection includes leaflets, tickets, newspaper extracts, advertising materials, invitations to cultural events and demonstrations, ballot papers, death notices, company letterheads, menus, official forms and even anonymous denunciations.
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev
This collection of identification documents was established in the late 1990s as part of the ephemera collection. It includes documents issued in Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and Germany, dating from the late eighteenth century to the present.
Curator: Mgr. Pavel Tašek, Ph.D.
Cantastoria prints represent a specific genre of printed material that served as a mass medium for broad segments of the population, particularly from the 17th to the 19th century.
The collection of cantastoria prints includes themes such as religious, pilgrimage, love, satirical (ballads), historical, military, moralizing, disaster, and crime (murder) stories. The collection contains both individual prints and sets of prints.
The curator of the collection is Mgr. Nikol Holubová
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The collection consists mainly of maps and plans from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with only occasional earlier items. It includes tourist and military maps as well as hand-drawn plans, for example of Allied air raids on Pardubice. Although geographically diverse, the collection primarily focuses on the Pardubice region. It comprises 708 inventory numbers.
Curator: Mgr. Jan Tetřev
The museum’s postcard collection is one of the largest of its kind in the Czech Republic, comprising over 300,000 items. It ranges from the first issues of correspondence cards in 1869 to the present day and provides a unique record of the development of postcards in the Czech lands.
Curator: Mgr. Matěj Bekera
This subcollection is one of the oldest parts of the museum’s collections. Its origins are closely linked to the initiative of teachers in founding the Pardubice Museum, which naturally influenced the composition of the collection. In addition to the collection of textbooks, which is part of the library’s holdings, a separate collection of school teaching aids was gradually built up, now numbering over 700 inventory items. The collection documents the history of education in the East Bohemian Region, spanning from the 19th century to the 1990s.
The collection is managed by Mgr. Nikol Holubová
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The photographic archive is one of the most frequently consulted collections in the museum. Its origins are closely connected with the founding of the museum itself.
It contains photographic prints, slides, negatives, albums and glass plate negatives. The most valuable part is a set of approximately 2,000 glass negatives from the estate of the Czech photographer Josef Pírka.
Curator: Mgr. Pavel Tašek, Ph.D.
This collection was established in the 1990s and currently comprises nearly 650 items. It is divided into ten thematic groups and includes objects dating from the nineteenth century to the present.
Curator: Mgr. Matěj Bekera
The collection consists of models of various types, predominantly relief models, including representations of housing estates, a swimming complex, an ice rink, the Opatovice power station and the Pardubice racecourse.
Curator: PhDr. Jan Ivanega, Ph.D.
The sport collection is relatively small, comprising approximately 530 items. It was established as a separate collection in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
It includes sports equipment, clothing, awards and trophies, flags, as well as extensive written and visual documentation of sporting activities represented in the collection.
Curator: PhDr. Ladislav Nekvapil, Ph.D.
It consists of several sections. The most frequently researched collection is the “Slavín” collection (signature KSl), which contains publications on regional topics. The Slavín Library holds approximately 3,000 titles. Another significant collection from the perspective of the history of education and pedagogy is the Pedagogical Library (signature KPed). The library includes textbooks (signature KUč), children’s literature (signature KPed A), and educational journals. The collection also features a collection of calendars (signature KK) and the private libraries of prominent regional figures—the libraries of Baron Artur Kraus, Jaroslav Fryč, Emanuel Kalenský, and Vojtěch Horák. The collection also includes old prints (signature KS), a regional studies library (signature KVk), religious literature (KN), and a collection documenting the output of Pardubice printing houses (signature KT). The collection includes a selection of Pardubice and East Bohemian newspapers and periodicals (signature ČI).
