Top 9 Museums in Panevezys County, Panevezys County

Treasury of the museum has been accumulated already from 1933. In the beginning of the year 2009, the selections of the museum consisted of over 80 thousand (including the branches of the museum in Kriaunos and Obeliai) exhibits. The exhibits according to the groups are divided into: exhibits of archeology, history, ethnography, folk art, professional art, photography, documentation, publication, personal archives, basic selection of books, notaphily, numismatics, archives of the church and the manor and auxiliary selection. The biggest selection is that of photographies and photonegatives, which consists of over 15 thousand exhibits: photographies of landlords, pictures of Rokiskis town, photographies about farming and economics, social-political life, etc. The museum boasts an abundant collection of numismatics, which comprises approximately 9 thousand exhibits. The biggest part of them consists of treasures. The largest one is the Mitragalis'treasure, containing 4762 coins. They are coins of Lithuanian-Polish republic and the neighbouring countries of the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th c.c. There also coins from 47 countries are being preserved. In the selection of documents (over 3 thousand items) the most interesting ones are the archives of Rokiskis Manor and Pandelys Church .A document of the year 1604, written in the Old Slavic Language and the one of the year 1661, written in the Polish Language as well as other documents, disclosing relationship among people of those times, contain various accounts, economic data concerning income and expense, taxes paid by peasants. Very important is an archive of persons; it contains documents of over 40 famous people coming from Rokiskis District. The scientific library of the museum contains approximately 5 thousand books. The bulk of the selection consists of the books and publications published before 1940. We can boost the ancient, unique publications such as "Postilla", written by one of the pioneers of the Lithuanian Writing Jonas Bretkunas (1536-1602), published in 1591 in Karaliaucius. Noteworthy is the book "About the Nature of all the People ", by Marcus Julius Cicero, published in the Polish Language in Vilnius in 1766. A lot of publications were given away to the museum in the first post-war years by the collector of publications Povilas Gasiunas (1897-1966). These are books from various fields of science. The group of professional art preserves about 2 thousand exhibits. There belong lithographies from "Vilnius Album" by Jonas Kazimieras Vilcinskis (1806-1862), paintings of artists from Western Europe, portraits of the Riomeriai family, copies of antique sculptures, bas-reliefs of the landlords, busts. It also comprises a big collection of works of modern professional. The archeological group contains over 1 thousand exhibits. They are bone tips of arrows, fish-forks, pins, stone and iron axes, brass and silver necklaces, bracelets, fragments of pots and other articles. The group of history is the most diverse: outfits of landlords, silver dishes, and other personal items of landlords, inventory of the church, means of school, teakettles, clocks, musical instruments, and personal belongings of the famous people of the district. The collection of the Lithuanian folk-art there are more than 2 thousand exhibits - tops of crosses made by blacksmiths, wooden sculptures, distaffs, pottery articles, drapery. The museum also conserves works of modern wood carvers, painters and weavers. One of the main aims of the museum is not only to collect, preserve exhibits, but also to take a proper care of them, restoring and conserving them. The center of Restoration of P.Gudynas in Vilnius has been restoring exhibits already from 1957. Major restoration works started after 1990. From 1996 to 2008 there over 400 exhibits of the museum value have been restored.