First Polish Museum of Underwater Archaeology to be established in Łeba

The online edition of “Rzepa” informs that the first Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Poland will be created in Łeba. This is great information for people interested in the subject and not only. This branch of archaeology has been developing very dynamically in recent years. Within many projects, interesting discoveries are being made, so we won’t be able to complain about the lack of expositions and exhibits.

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According to “Rzeczpospolita”, the director of the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, Jerzy Litwin, the new facility will be another branch of the National Maritime Museum and will be opened within the next 5 years. The beginning of the year will see the launch of a competition for the architectural concept of the facility.

“We envisage that the museum will occupy several halls, in one of which we will want to show Slavic boats and the boat-building art of the time. In others, exhibits excavated during archaeological explorations. Part of the exhibition will also be devoted to fishing and sea rescue,” explains Dr. Litwin

It is already known that the new museum will be built near the place where the Łeba river has its outlet to Lake Łebsko. Of course, the location was not chosen by accident. It is here that early medieval Slavic boats were discovered (photo).

“We would like it to be possible, following the example of the museum of Viking boats in Oslo or Roskilde, to show there some interesting boats built by the Slavs,” explains Dr Jerzy Litwin in Rzeczpospolita

The creation of the first Museum of Underwater Archaeology will certainly be another important step in the development of this discipline in our country. Especially if we take into account that universities in Warsaw or Toruń, which offer a specialisation in underwater archaeology, educate more and more qualified personnel.

The need to create a place dedicated to both discoveries, excavated artefacts and everything related to underwater archaeology itself should therefore come as no surprise. From the position of a visitor, I hope that in a few years the facility will become one of the most interesting objects on the museum map of Poland. I base my conviction on the huge variety of finds and discoveries made by underwater archaeologists.

The themes of the exhibition, if we talk about underwater archaeology, range from the Stone Age to more modern times, such as the Second World War. The waters of the Baltic Sea, rivers, lakes and all other bodies of water have been able to hide real treasures from the human eye for hundreds and thousands of years. Let us hope that in the coming years we will be able to admire many of them in the Museum of Underwater Archaeology.

Source: rp.pl Photo: Press materials of the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk