The Cobblestone of Sopron – the children’s museum

The Macskakő Children Museum is located in the centre of Sopron, on Szent György street, in a special building, the Eggenberg House, which played a extraordinary role during the Counter-Reformation. The house is named after the widow of Prince John Eggenberg, Maria Sidonia von Thannhausen, who bought the one-storey building with a loggia courtyard in 1674. The princess was the Earl of Brandenburg’s relative, so her priest was allowed to hold a Lutheran service in the house. As in Sopron, the churches of Lutherans were taken away during the Counter-Reformation, their worship was banned everywhere else, and believers could only hear Protestant worship here in the Eggenberg House. A stone pulpit was built in the courtyard, decorated with garlands of fruit, flowers and the coat of arms of the ancestors of the Brandenburg family, the Hohenzollern dynasty, and from here the princess’s pastor preached for the congregation between 1674 and 1676.

A children's museum was set up on the street front of this building, and a museum pedagogical activity room was created in the part of the building opening onto the courtyard. They display the people’s everyday life and way of life from old times to the children in an interesting, interactive way, of course adapted to suit their age. The exhibition is aimed primarily at pre-school and lower school students, with creative activities, role-plays and digital assignments.

“You are only an idea away from any time,” we can read on the welcome wall of the exhibition, as we really only need our imagination here. We still remember how intensely we were in contact with the object world in our younger years, we constantly grabbed, felt, observed objects, and thus we interpreted the world around us. Here, children can explore the world of bygone ages just as playfully as we used to do, more precisely with the help of time travel, through the objects used today and in the past. In the children's museum, objects from old times speak to us: most of them are connected to the children's schedule, they can be linked to sleep, bathing, and dressing, which come from the museum's various collections from Roman times to the present day.  These objects had a place in traditional repositories, accompanied by short descriptions and various curiosities. Here you can see, among other things, an original Roman perfume bottle, a porcelain tea set, of which Charles IV and Queen Zita drank, or just an indoor toilet from the 19th century. However, a special feature of the children's museum is that an internal interactive space opens up behind the shelves sunk into the traditional wall, taking advantage of the interior of the listed building, which you can hide in. These gaps call for adventure and arouse the curiosity of children, almost inviting them. With the help of information referring to the specific past in the “circles”, they can experience what it was like to be a child hundreds or thousands of years ago.  Children are invited to take interactive tasks, such as examining an ancient dining table, playing games from the last century, sitting at a hundred-year-old school desk, and trying out how their peers once dressed. 

The museum is also home to unusual classes, birthdays and a summer camp. At the Garden of the Muses, children aged 7-14 are welcomed to attend the summer camp where they can play, create for fun but children can also join for one day at a time.  The Cobblestone Children's Museum deserved one of the most prestigious recognitions in the museum profession, the “Exhibition of the Year 2018” award. And we can get insanely cute cat souvenirs from the Cat shop.