O Muzeum

The Museum of Old Commerce, which is located in the Old Town Hall, came into being in 1967. It is the only museum in Poland, which deals with commerce so widely. Świdnica is a town with very interesting history and that is why some exhibitions are devoted to the town’s history. The exposition begins in the lobby. There the matzevahs from the Świdnica medieval Jewish cemetery are housed. The arrangement of a pharmacy dating from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, apart from original furnishing, includes scales, drug containers and tins. The first pharmacy in Świdnica was recorded in 1330.  In the history of the town there were a few famous physicians. One of them was Albert Neisser – the founder of dermatology. His bust is the pride of the pharmacy waiting room situated opposite the pharmacy. Between the years 1664 and 1742 Dr Sigismund Hahn, a co-founder of hydrotherapy lived in Świdnica. In another hall a tavern from the early twentieth century was arranged. In the old cloth hall mugs and bottles made of glass, stoneware and porcelain are exhibited. They come from the 19th and the early 20th  century. Among them there are containers of highly valued Polish and foreign companies. In the same hall there is an arrangement of a general store from the early 20th. The arrangement presents shop-signs with company advertisements e.g. Persil, Maggi and Dr. Oetker. In the store we can admire advertising literature, stoneware containers, tins for tobacco, tea, coffee and Wedel confectionary products of Warsaw and Piasecki’s of Krakow. Another exposition shows an arrangement of a market. The market had been held at the Świdnica market square since the Middle Ages. Bigger towns erected so called Scale Houses, where standards of measures were kept. The unique relics of that arrangement are a sixteenth-century town scale from the Town of Bolków, stone weights and a seventeenth-century market law hat (Marktrechtshut) from the Town of Głogów. The successor of the scale house in respect of the verification and supervision of measures was the Office of Measures. At that arrangement there are scales, weights, ells, calipers, liquid and dry measures and also measurement tools for marking, calibration and verification of instruments. The most valuable scales include: eighteenth-century market scales and the only preserved Rademacher & Gruedelbach scale in the world. An exceptional highlight of the collection is a scale for weights calibration made by the London company Oertling – a true Rolls-Royce among scales. In the museum a petrol station dating from the first half of the 20th century was arranged. Against the background of a photo of a Wrocław petrol station from around 1938 there are pumps of DAPG (later Standard Oil and ESSO), Schwelmertankanlage made by the Steel Goods Factory Müller & Co and a motor oil pump made by Shell. You can also see a photo of a car dealership owned by W. Illmann doing business in Świdnica as early as since 1923 and an advertisement of Świdnica G. Bohn company, which made car bodies around the year 1910. In another hall there are so called stall articles – the objects which were a part of the shop fittings. They include calculating machines – adding machines, arithmometres, printed bills with logos e.g. of Philips company, tablets used for calculations and money boxes. It is worth drawing your attention to a collection of coin scales, which were used to avoid forgeries while doing cash transactions. There is also a valuable collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century merchant lead seals. In a small room cash registers from the first half of the 20th century are exhibited (National and Anker) and a replica of a counter with a collection of mechanical calculators (Addiator – Duplex, Produx and Omega) used for basic calculations. In the Old Town Hall the relics of the stalls of reach merchants have been preserved. The consent to build them was given by Duke Bolko I. The stalls sold mainly satin, taffeta, damask, haberdashery ribbons and jewellery. The stallkeepers sold fabrics by the ell while other goods could not be heavier than 1 stone (about 12 kg). At the brewing exposition there are exhibited the phases of beer brewing. This beverage used to make the Town famous and bring in such enormous income to its inhabitants that other Silesian dukes were filled with envy. It was because of this that the so called “beer war” was fought between 1380 and 1382. Świdnica beer cellars that sold the beverage were, among other places, in Wrocław, Krakow, Prague and Heidelberg. The beer from Świdnica was also sold in Pisa in Italy. At the back of the hall we can admire ancient vessels used for drinking the amber beverage. In the adjacent room a seventeenth-century tavern chamber was arranged. On the first floor of the Old Town Hall are the most impressive rooms in the museum. The baroque lobby is graced with a copy of a painting showing Świdnica in the late 17th century and with the coat of arms of the Starost of the Świdnica-Jawor Duchy, J. J. M. von Sinzendorf. You enter the Councillors’ Hall through a late-Gothic portal, on the lintel of which there is Latin inscription that reads: “Happy is a town, which is afraid of wars at peace”. The late-Gothic hall is graced with polychromes from around 1537. They show biblical scenes: Harlot Judged, Last Judgment and Crucifixion of Jesus. In the centre of the room there is a model showing Świdnica in 17th century. The historical objects assembled in the Councillors’ Hall present the history of the town and its vicinity cross-sectionally. Connected with guilds are seal stamps, tin vessels and guild statutes. Among the archaeological artefacts from the area of the town the most valuable one is the famous fibula often called “the Świdnica Fibula”. It is about 3000 years old and it comes from the Lusatian culture. In the adjacent annexe a small mausoleum of Świdnica Piast dynasty was arranged, whose main highlight are the copies of tomb reliefs depicting the founder of the Świdnica Duchy Bolko I and his grandson Bolko II. The last rooms for visiting on the first floor are: a gallery of Świdnica painters and a salon. In the gallery are the works of local artists, graduates of prestigious art schools: T. Gadomski (a pupil of J. Matejko), A. Brade, M. Ruszkiewicz. K. Karst, A. Andrzejewski and M. Kosiba. The highlight of the salon are baroque furniture, a replica of a table and chairs (made in nineteenth-century English style) and a painting depicting the last Starost of the Świdnica-Jawor Duchy, H. A. von Schaffgotsch.