Sulphur in Old Poland

SULPHUR IN OLD POLAND is an exhibition presenting the history of sulphur mining and processing in Swoszowice near Kraków, the only place in Europe where deep (underground) sulphur mines and smelters that extracted sulphur from ore mined by miners operated from the Middle Ages until 1884..

The exhibition recalls the first mention of sulphur in Polish history, found in the legend of the Wawel Dragon; the first act of law in the world concerning sulphur mining, the privilege granted by King Władysław Jagiełło in 1415; and a group of scholars who studied sulphur (the alchemist Michał Sędziwój, Jędrzej Śniadecki, Stanisław Staszic), as well as the discoverers of Polish sulphur deposits known and exploited today (professors Jan Czarnocki, Stanisław and Katarzyna Pawłowski).

The exhibition includes iconographic materials, a reconstruction of a medieval mine shaft and gallery, and a mining face of sulphur ore; mining tools and lamps from the 15th to 19th centuries; original stones from sulphur smelting taken from a 16th-century smelter slag heap; reconstructions of costumes worn by 18th/19th-century sulphur mine managers; and a reconstruction of an alchemical laboratory.