In the north of Buzau County in Romania there is a small village called Colti. It became famous in the mid 1920’s when large deposits of amber were found. For about 3 decades multiple mines opened. Essentially Amber is fossilised tree raisin known for its remarkable preservation properties where insects and even smaller animals can be trapped for millennia. Amber artefacts can be of remarkable historical, archaeological, paleontological and geological value.
A project to showcase the amber collection was started in 1973 in the village and in 1980 it was inaugurated as part of the collection of Buzau County Museum. However, throughout the county and country the location became popularized as a museum on its own. A local festival entitled the Amber Flower celebration was held in 1983, 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020.
After a prolonged rehabilitation in 2019, the museum reopened in 2020 showing a remarkable collection of amber jewels, tools used for mining amber in the previous century, and a variety of archaeological and paleo-archaeological material.
Today it serves as a unique cultural establishment not just in Romania but also South-Eastern Europe, a small cultural gem hidden in the forests of the lower Carpathian Mountains which is located less than 100 miles away from the Romanian capital Bucharest.
Name and Location: Muzeul Chihlimbarului Colți (Museum of Amber Colti)
Address: Colți 127195, Buzau, Romania
Website: https://www.muzeubuzau.ro/?lang=en&venue=colectia-de-chihlimbar-colti
Telephone number: 0238 502770
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Vlad Zamfira (Masters of Arts in Archaeology & History and Certificate of Postgraduate research in History at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland) is a historian and podcaster interested mainly in the History of the 16th century Mediterranean with particular focus to Venetian, Ottoman and Spanish relations during the period between 1559-1581 and the Fourth Ottoman-Venetian War of Cyprus. Also with a keen interest in the history of the Eighty & Thirty Years' Wars; Scottish and European History as whole.