Gemer-Malohont Museum, Rimavská Sobota

The Gemer-Malohont Museum documents the nature and society of the Gemer and Malohont Region and is one of the oldest museums in Slovakia. It was founded in 1882 following an exhibition of art and archaeology whose organisers set up the Gemer-Malohont Museum Society, laying the foundation of the future museum district. Initially located in the District House in Rimavská Sobota’s main square, the museum relocated in 1910 to a former barracks building, built in 1850 according to a Neo-Classicist design by Ferenc Miks, which has remained its residence until the present day.

The Gemer-Malohont Museum specialises in the documentation, research and acquisition of collections in the fields of history, archaeology, ethnology, visual art, natural sciences and the Romany culture of the Gemer-Malohont region. Its rich collections from the social and natural sciences complement an extensive historic museum book stock. In total the museum holds in excess of 93,000 objects, the most valuable museum of which include archaeological relics from eneolith, anthropomorphous funeral urns with illustrations of unknown divinities dating from early 2nd century BCE, prehistoric bronzes, guild artefacts, ethnographical objects from 16th-19th centuries, and a large set of folk ceramics from the 17th-20th centuries. The visual art collection comprises mostly portraits from 18th-20th centuries. One of the most interesting museum collections is a mummy of woman from Abusír el Melek in Egypt, well-preserved in its original sarcophagus.

These collections are displayed through a number of permanent museum exhibitions, set up in 1979 and comprising: a Local History Exhibition which presents the historical development of the district; a Geological Exhibition which shows the tectonic development, geological conditions and mineral wealth of the region; a Biology Exhibition which represents the biology of the region by habitat according to geographic area; an Archaeological Exhibition which makes accessible artefacts from primeval times and the early historical period; a Historical Exhibition which opens with the origins of the Great Moravian Empire, continues with the period of the territory's incorporation into the Hungarian kingdom, and documents the wars with the Hussites and the Turks and the development of trades and crafts in the 18th-19th centuries; and an Ethnographic Exhibition which presents the traditional folk culture of Gemer and Malohont region.