Mediaș Municipal Museum

The Mediaș Municipal Museum is at Strada Mihai Viteazul 46 in Mediaș, in the building of the former Franciscan friary next to the Roman Catholic church. It is run by Mediaș City Hall and also manages the Stephan Ludwig Roth Memorial House at Strada Johannes Honterus 10. The museum's beginnings are documented in the second half of the 19th century, based on the collections of the Evangelical Gymnasium, and it was formally founded in 1901 on the initiative of the teachers Carl Martin Römer and Ludwig Binder. From 1923 the collection was shown to the public as the „Museum Alt-Mediasch”, and in 1949 it became a state institution. In 1970 the museum moved into the former Franciscan friary, a Gothic building of the 15th century that had served as a school boarding house after 1948; the cloister is dated to 1490-1515 and 1726-1733. The collection holds nearly 30,000 items. The history and archaeology section keeps Coțofeni and Noua culture pottery, three Dacian hoards and pewter and earthenware guild vessels. The ethnography exhibition „Traditional Occupations and Folk Costume of the Târnava Valleys” covers herding, farming, winegrowing and textile work, Romanian, Saxon and Hungarian costume and a Saxon house interior. The natural history section, founded in 1961, has collections of minerals, Quaternary fossils, a herbarium and over 8,000 butterflies from the Frederic König collection, shown in temporary exhibitions. The building is part of the former Franciscan friary ensemble, listed historic monument LMI SB-II-a-A-12438; the cloister that houses the museum is listed as SB-II-m-A-12438.02. The museum is accredited by the Ministry of Culture (order no. 3809 of 22.12.2021) and is open to the public.