Archeopark Pavlov
Museum · Pavlov · Czechia
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Underground archaeology museum opened in 2016 on the site of a Gravettian culture settlement (young Paleolithic period). The building is buried beneath the slopes of Pavlovské vrchů, with white concrete skylights emerging above ground to evoke the limestone cliffs of Pálava.
The museum stands on one of the most important Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe: together with the nearby dig at Dolní Věstonice, it helped define the Gravettian culture whose mammoth hunters camped across this valley some 30,000 years ago. Inside, the underground galleries hold the stone and bone tools those hunters worked, Venus and animal figurines, and a replica of the triple burial excavated at Dolní Věstonice. The excavation itself was declared a national cultural monument in 2010, and architects Radko Květ and Pavel Pijáček built the museum straight into the find site, opening it to the public in 2016. That underground design went on to win the Building of the Year 2016 award and the following year's Czech Architecture Prize.
What you see
A final hall carries visitors on a raised walkway over an open excavation trench: mammoth and reindeer bones left exactly where diggers found them mid-construction, spotlit out of the dark around them.
Practical
Open Tuesday-Sunday April through November (Friday-Sunday only in April, October and November); shut for winter, December through March.
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Common questions
- Why stop at Archeopark Pavlov on a bike ride?
- Underground archaeology museum opened in 2016 on the site of a Gravettian culture settlement (young Paleolithic period). The building is buried beneath the slopes of Pavlovské vrchů, with white concrete skylights emerging above ground to evoke the limestone cliffs of Pálava.
- Where is Archeopark Pavlov?
- Archeopark Pavlov is in Pavlov, Czechia (Czech Republic).