#Exhibit of the Month

The 21 beads form part of a bronze hoard found in 2019 within a forested area close to the town of Nisporeni. Alongside the beads, the hoard included numerous bronze ornaments (2 Röschitz-Sanislău-type fibulae, 7 necklaces, 12 rings, 22 tubes, 23 bracelets, and approximately 80 appliqués), one coral bead and a pendant made from a wild animal's tooth. At present, the amber beads are preserved in the collections of the Muzeul Național de Istorie a Moldovei, while the remainder of the hoard is in the possession of a private collector.
The hoard was discovered accidentally in a pit about 50 cm deep. The objects in this hoard are of Western origin, with known parallels in archaeological complexes from Poland, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia, and, to a lesser extent, in Romania. The presence of this bronze hoard on the territory of the Republic of Moldova illustrates the cultural dynamics of the region during the Early Iron Age and a fundamental shift in the vector of cultural influences from east to west.

The amber bead strand comprises 16 whole beads and five fragmentary ones. They have an elongated biconical shape and vary in size. The beads are brown-reddish in color; their lengths range from 1.1 to 3.1 cm, widths from 0.6 to 1.4 cm, thicknesses from 0.6 to 1.1 cm, and the perforation diameter ranges between 0.2 and 0.3 cm.
Amber beads appear in several bronze hoards dated to the Late Bronze Age in the eastern half of Slovakia and in Transdanubian Hungary. Parallels are also known from the Cioclovina Cave in Romania. With the onset of the Iron Age, amber items disappear from the Carpathian Basin for approximately 300 years, reappearing alongside the arrival of Scythian elements.
The bronze hoard discovered at Nisporeni is dated to the HaA2-HaB1-2 interval (1050/1000 - 800/750 B.C.).

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

“Sybir – prison of nations”

August 29 – October 20, 2025

The exhibition "Sybir - prison of nations" presents a history in which each of us or our loved ones can find ourselves, including our parents and grandparents. It tells about the history of the Second World War. However, it does not focus on military operations and, certainly, they are not the main subject. Instead, photo-documentary testimonies of people under Soviet occupation during the Second World War are presented to the larger public.

The exhibition describes the drama of the lives of Polish citizens, from the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939, through mass deportations, imprisonment and labor camps, to the chance to leave the Soviet Union - first with the Army of General Anders, then with the units led by Zygmunt Berling and, finally, during the return home after the end of the war. Part of the common history of Central and Eastern Europe, following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the history and memory of the inhabitants of Bessarabia after the establishment of the Soviet occupation in the region is presented.

The exhibition approach reveals the drama of Stalinist deportations, forced labor, harsh cold, difficult living conditions and lack of rights of those who went through the Gulag. At the same time, the exhibition message brings to the attention of visitors the fact that in the midst of this atrocious existence, the hope of reuniting with loved ones, homesickness and Christian faith remained for many of the deportees the only sources of resistance and survival. For years, their memories were overlooked, and today they are "an open book about our common past".

The sources of the photographs and oral history testimonies come from the collection of the Sybir Memorial Museum, the collection of the National Museum of History of Moldova, Tomasz Kizny's album GULAG, the public domain.

The exhibition is the result of cooperation between the Sybir Memorial Museum (Muzeum Pamięci Sybiru) in Bialystok, the National Museum of History of Moldova and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Republic of Moldova.

The exhibition will be open to the public until October 20, 2025.