Mineralogical Museum in Szklarska Poręba

In front of the wooden villa on Kilińskiego Street lie petrified tree trunks from the Carboniferous period, and inside you will find a piece of the Gibeon meteorite and stromatolites around 570 million years old. The Mineralogical Museum in Szklarska Poręba is a private collection run by the Sokołowski family since 1993 in a listed building. It is a good place to see what the Karkonosze and Jizera Mountains are made of, along with specimens from the other side of the world.

The collection

The museum displays nearly 3,000 exhibits. Three groups draw the most attention:

• Minerals and rocks – calcites and stalactites from Wojcieszów, metal ores from the Trepča mines in Kosovo and Cavnic in Romania, specimens from the Karkonosze and Jizera Mountains, and the Gibeon iron meteorite from Namibia.
• Fossils – the oldest pieces are stromatolites from the Kaczawskie Mountains, structures built by cyanobacteria around 570 million years ago, and Cambrian trilobites, estimated at about 530 million years old.
• Dinosaurs – skeletons and bone fragments of dinosaurs and other fossil animals.

Outside stands the "Carboniferous Forest": petrified trunks of Dadoxylon trees, set up in front of the entrance like a small grove from the age when coal seams were forming. It is the first thing you see as you approach from the street.

The building

The museum occupies a wooden villa with a turret, listed as a historic monument (no. 1327/J) in 1998. With its dark log walls, red-and-white gables, decorated balconies and slender turret, the building itself is worth a look from outside. The "MUZEUM" lettering on the façade and the stone trunks by the entrance are easy to spot from the street.

Did you know

Szklarska Poręba has two geological museums. The other one, the "Juna" Earth Museum in a former "hunger inn" in the Kamienna valley, burned down in March 2015 and reopened in 2018. The Sokołowski family also runs the Stone Museum in Kamień Pomorski on the Baltic coast.

Tripto tip

The museum is open all year, and admission is charged. The operator's official website was not responding in October 2026, and tourist portals give different hours for high and low season, so call ahead or check on site before you go. Allow 45–60 minutes to see the rooms without rushing. With children, start with the meteorite and the dinosaurs, then hunt for the trilobites – the oldest animals you will see that day.