Podtatranské museum in Poprad

At the General Assembly of the Hungarian Carpathian Association on August 6, 1876, a resolution was adopted on the establishment of a museum building fund. According to interested members of the Hungarian Carpathian Association, the newly established museum based in Kežmarok was not an ordinary collection of non-functional old things, but a patriotic museum of international significance, presenting the area of tourism, the center of overall cultural and scientific activities of the association.

In Veľká in 1881, they founded the local museum association, the Society of the Velický Tatra Museum, whose main goal was to build their own museum. These efforts were fulfilled on July 2, 1882, by making the first museum collections of the Tatra Museum available to the general public in the modest premises of the Evangelical parish, which was located in the local school. Its greatest supporter and supporter, Aurel Viliam Scherfel, a local pharmacist and botanist, became the museum's director. After the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, the administration of the museum was taken over by the village of Veľká. In an effort to build or acquire a new, separate building for the Tatra Museum directly in the village, the municipal council succeeded in buying one of the tourist buildings in Krompecher Park in 1926.

On July 22, 1885, the foundation stone of the Carpathian Museum building in Poprad was laid. The financially demanding construction was completed on August 21, 1886 and the collections made available to the public a year later, on August 6, 1887. The land for its construction was donated by a local patron, a great museum enthusiast and his long-time active supporter Dávid Husz. In the original building scope, it had about two-fifths of the current scope. There were three rooms upstairs. In addition to mineralogical, botanical and zoological collections, ethnographic - tourist collections and a library were also presented. In 1907, the first extension of the Carpathian Museum building in Poprad was completed. It lasted two years, and after its completion, the exhibition area was increased by two side wings.

At the end of the Second World War, there were two sub-Tatra museums, the Carpathian Museum in Poprad, under the administration of the Carpathian Association, and the Tatra Museum in Veľká, managed by the Great Museum Society and the village, in ruins.

After the dissolution of both associations, the SNR regulation no. 51/1945 Coll., Museums actually disappeared. The confusing situation was resolved by the newly established District National Committee in Poprad, which on 26 July 1945 by Resolution no. 349/1945 took over the administration of the abandoned museum of the dissolved Carpathian Association in Poprad, as well as the museum of the Great Museum Society in Veľká, which did not have confirmed statutes, in order to combine two rare collections of Tatra and sub-Tatra flora, fauna, minerals, folklore and historical and cultural monuments , to one institution. The joint museum was named the Tatra Museum of the Poprad District, abbreviated as the Tatra Museum based in Poprad. The Tatra Museum of the Poprad District, established by the District National Committee in Poprad, became the first, after the war, restored museum in Slovakia and at the same time the first post-war museum with district powers.

On April 1, 1957, the Museum of the Tatra National Park was established, with a temporary seat in the museum building in Poprad (until 1959). On the same day, the District Museum of National History in Poprad was established. After the adoption of the SNR Act no. 109/1961 Coll. on museums and galleries and in accordance with the new network of museums being prepared, in 1961 the District Museum of Homeland Studies in Poprad was renamed the Podtatranské Museum in Poprad.

In 1974, the museum acquired new premises, in the building of the former burgher house (NKP) on the square, in the city monument reserve in Poprad - Spišská Sobota.

After a long-term founder of the District National Committee in Poprad, the museum changed its founder in 1991, becoming the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic (MK SR), in 1996 - Podtatranské kulturné centrum, 1998 - Regional Office in Prešov. Since 2002, the Prešov self-governing region has been the founder of the museum.

The museum registers more than 52,500 collection items and more than 18,000 volumes of books in the museum's library. After the last comprehensive reconstruction of the museum building on Vajanského Street (2015 - 2016), registered in the State List of Cultural Monuments of the Slovak Republic (NKP), it is ready to open its doors to the public. It will offer visitors two new permanent exhibitions. The first, Poprad and its surroundings in the mirror of ages, presents the history of settlement in the sub-Tatra region from the Neanderthal to the present. The second will be dedicated to a unique archaeological find - the tomb of a nobleman from Poprad - Matejoviec from the end of the 4th to the beginning of the 5th century AD These expositions will also include objects of craft workshops, located in the museum garden.