On the premises of the former Jan Šverma coal mine, which included several shafts during its operation, there is now an open-air museum and a museum of coal mining. In the places where miners used to go to the mines in the middle of the 19th century, there are now exhibitions dedicated to individual sections of coal mining and processing. Preserved here you can see original pieces of equipment, carriages and tracks, period clothing and tools ─ from historical to modern. The tour begins in the original dressing room, the so-called chain room, leads to the shaft building, then to the 52-metre high mining tower Jan, from which you can see the Krkonoše peaks, and you can also look into the Morning Star mining adit itself, about 100 metres long, where you can also see the coal seams. In addition, there is a small collection of palaeontological finds that were discovered during open-pit mining. The history of black coal mining in the Žacléř region dates back to the second half of the 16th century. The first mention of mining is from 1570, but archaeological findings show that coal and iron ore were mined here much earlier. The greatest development of mining came with the industrial revolution in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century, when several new pits were opened and the mines were equipped with steam mining machines. Mining continued until recent years, when it was switched from underground to open pit mining.

Keywords: geology; mining; open-air museum; museum; mining engineering; palaeontology

Mining open-air museum Žacléř