The Museum of Speleology and Bulgarian Karst in Chepelare is unique of its kind in Bulgaria and is the only museum about caves in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the first floor of a hotel building built in alpine style, not accidentally called "The Caveman".
The museum was founded in 1980 in Chepelare. It has rich exposition to minerals, precious and semiprecious stones, various types of rock and cave formations. The museum has a cave paleontology department, which shows what animals have inhabited the caves, such as the cave bears in the Rhodope caves, from which have been discovered bones and teeth. The museum has exhibits thousands of years of age. Some of the oldest exhibits in the museum are from Yagodinska cave and are more than 6 000 years old.
The museum occupies an area of 870 square meters and has a main fund of 9400 exhibits, a scientific fund of 7100 exhibits and a 170 exchange fund, a guest room for exhibitions, a library of 730 volumes of scientific literature, a laboratory and a conference hall with 60 seats.
Expositions in the museum are grouped under the following sections: Mineralogy, Geology and Petrography, Surfaces and Secondary Karst Forms, Biospeleology, Cave Paleontology and Cave Archeology.
Recently a skeleton of a cave bear lived 12-13 thousand years ago was received in the Museum's fund.
Source: http://chepelare.org/ A short video about the museum.
Translation Yordan Georgiev - trainee
