Regional Museum in Ząbkowice Śląskie

The oldest surviving house in Ząbkowice Śląskie, the so-called Kauffung Manor at 1 Krzywa Street, holds a regional museum with eighteen rooms of mementoes of former residents. The main draw, though, is in the cellars: Frankenstein's Laboratory, which tells how a town called Frankenstein until 1946 may have inspired Mary Shelley. It all begins with a dark case of gravediggers in 1606.

History: a manor of 1504 and its rescuer

The first record of the building dates from 29 November 1504. Until 1945 it belonged to a succession of well-known local families; its last owner was the Catholic parish, and the church choirmaster Bernhard Walzik lived here. In the late 1960s local enthusiast Józef Glabiszewski began campaigning to save the neglected house. Thanks to him, on 9 May 1972 the Regional Museum opened on the ground floor; today it bears his name.

What to see

The museum occupies 18 rooms. Permanent displays cover archaeology, ethnography, household life, crafts and guild chests, weapons, 18th- and 19th-century bourgeois furniture, hand-painted Silesian furniture, dowry and travel chests, early printed books, shooting targets of the marksmen's guild, and old radios and television sets. In the building itself, look out for:

• the surviving domestic chapel with religious objects,
• a well inside the house, about 20 m deep,
• 16th-century window columns on the ground floor.

Frankenstein's Laboratory and the gravediggers affair

In 1606 an epidemic broke out in Frankenstein; according to the local cultural centre it killed almost a third of the inhabitants. Eight gravediggers – six men and two women – were blamed. Under torture they confessed to making a poisonous powder from corpses and scattering it in houses. The trial took place on 20 September 1606, and 17 people in all were executed in the affair; the last execution took place in February 1607. Newspapers in Augsburg reported the case, and sermons preached after it were printed in Leipzig. Two centuries later Mary Shelley named her hero Frankenstein – whether she knew this story is unknown, but the townspeople like to think so. The Laboratory has been in the cellars since 2001; a new multimedia display was recently created here as part of a Polish-Czech Interreg project.

Tripto tips

• Hours: according to the Ząbkowice Culture and Tourism Centre, the town's attractions are open all year, daily 9:30–17:30, except 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 November and 25 December; last entry half an hour before closing (as of October 2026).
• Tickets: museum plus Frankenstein's Laboratory – standard PLN 30, reduced PLN 25, family (2+1) PLN 80.
• From October to March the museum also sells tickets for the Leaning Tower and the castle ruins – the tower leans more than 2 m off vertical.
• Allow about an hour for the museum and the Laboratory.