The Museum of the First Piasts at Lednica

The Museum of the First Piasts at Lednica was established in 1969 as the Museum of the Beginnings of the Polish State. In 1974 it was given its present name. The main reason behind the origin of the Museum was to protect monuments of Ostrów Lednicki – a palatium with a chapel and a stronghold – as well as to carry out scholarly research on them. The origin of the new centre and the creation of a landscape vicinity around Lake Lednica became a stimulus for the establishing of the Wielkopolska Ethnographic Park in 1975 in Dziekanowice. It was designed as a reconstruction of a 19th c. Greater Poland village, encompassing examples of traditional rural architecture. The Branch which came into existence in such a way become part of the Museum and in 1982 it was opened to visitors. Three years later the institution was provided with another Branch, which exists today as the Archaeological Reserve – Early Piast Stronghold in Giecz. It was established in 1963 as a local post of the Archaeological Museum in Poznań under the name of the Piast Stronghold in Giecz. Its aim was to protect remains of the stronghold which were discovered in the years 1949-1953 and which became an archaeological sensation of that time. In 1988 the Lednica Landscape Park was established in the area around Lake Lednica. Its aim is to protect landscape monuments. In 1997 the Archaeological Reserve – Stronghold in Grzybowo also became a Museum Branch. In 2010, a stylised exhibition-storage building with research ateliers was constructed there. The Museum of the First Piasts at Lednica is the largest museum institution of the Marshal’s Office of the Wielkopolskie Voivodeship.


The mission of the Museum of the First Piasts at Lednica is to preserve in the collective memory the knowledge of the significance of Ostrów Lednicki and other Early Medieval strongholds in Greater Poland  from the period of the formation of the Polish state. It is also intended to provoke visitors’ interest in the history of Greater Poland’s countryside with its 19th c. positivist tradition, which transformed Greater Poland into the most culturally developed region in the Polish lands at that time.

One of three rudimental and equivalent aims of the Museum is to take care of the Early Medieval strongholds situated in a unique historical space and an attractive natural environment and to protect artefacts acquired in the course of archaeological research, that is, finds which are in the Museum’s care. Another aim is to reconstruct typical buildings of 19th c. Greater Poland’s countryside with complete furnishings of homesteads. The third aim is to popularise in attractive forms the knowledge of the priceless monuments of the Polish cultural heritage and the natural environment which are in the Museum’s care and which have been almost completely unchanged by civilisation’s activities since the 10th c.

The Museum is composed of four Branches which are independent exhibition bodies.
 

http://lednicamuzeum.pl/en/strona,history.html