Karner (Carnanrium) funeral chapel of St. Michael

Originally a Romanesque two-story rotunda with the chapel of St. Michael and with an ossuary (Ossarium) deeply embedded in the ground, from the period of the first half of the 13th century. In the chapel there are frescoes from two stages - figure painting from the 14th century and ornamental painting from the second half of the 15th century.

In the second half of the 16th century, a cannon bastion covered the original karner object and changed its function. The original Romanesque and Gothic windows, the original two Romanesque entrances, between which a rich Renaissance frame was inserted in the 16th century, originally with the Crucifixion, have been preserved.

The ossuary is vaulted with ribs of a square profile on a central prismatic pillar. Both unground and unground bones from the parish cemetery near the Church of the Virgin Mary were placed in it. Skeletal remains (more than 20 hay wagons) were taken out of the ossuary at the beginning of the 20th century and buried in a common grave at the cemetery in Banská Štiavnica.

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Himmelreich

In the western part of the walls, there is a tower from the end of the 14th century, which was used as a priest's apartment. In the 16th century, it was converted into a city prison and torture chamber. The floor was occupied by a supervisor, the administrator of the building.

The underground rooms served as a dungeon and torture chamber for criminals, insurgents in the miners' uprising of 1525-1526, disgruntled miners in the 17th century who did not come to work. They were locked up one by one in small rooms with thick stone walls, small windows, a clay floor, and chained with iron shackles.

In the old protocols of the Banská Štiavnica mining court, the bastion was derisively called HIMMELREICH (heavenly realm), because it was believed that only death awaits the person who gets there.

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Castle well

It is carved into the rock, the water level is 9-10 metres below ground level, it has a rich spring. At a depth of about 18 metres, an adit opens into it, which continues to the northwest, in the direction of the semi-bastion on the rising terrain. Through this gallery, in case of greatest danger, the refugees staying in the castle could easily leave the fortress. After the water was exhausted, the tunnel could therefore serve as a rescue escape corridor. The well has a rich spring, so it would fill up again shortly after they left and prevent their pursuit.

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Lapidary

In the 20s of the 20th century, the curator and director of the museum, prof. Vojtech Baker, to establish a lapidary in the inner courtyard of the castle.

Stone baptisteries from the 13th century, 15th century and from 1559 are rare. Remains of portals from the 13th century, window frames, slats from the Romanesque period of the church, memorial plaques, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, coming from the Fraunberg cemetery, from the Old castle, Banská Štiavnica mines, Banská Bela, from public buildings, from residential burgher houses, tombstones of Banská Štiavnica waldburgers (mine owners), their wives, etc.

The cast-iron tombstone of Polixena Kielmann, the wife of the Banská Štiavnica miner (waldburger) Andrej Kielmann, is unique, as the oldest known domestically produced cast-iron product in Central Europe. The plastic relief of the wedding farewell and family coats of arms is accompanied by text.

In the right corner of the liapidarium, there is a spiral staircase with slender polygonal columns from the Gothic construction phase, which probably led to the "dead man's" bell belonging to the former church.

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Baroque stone sculptures

The exposition of baroque sculpture in the premises of the military chapel (presbytery of the church before its construction in the 16th century) mainly presents original monumental baroque stone sculptures from the Plague statue of St. Trinity on St. Trinity Square. The mayor of the city took the initiative to build the plague statue after the large-scale plague epidemic subsided in 1706-1711. The first column built was simple, but after the visit of the police in 1755, the preparation of the monumental statue according to Viennese models began. Dionýz Ignác Stanetti was the designer, Karol Holzknecht was in charge of the stonework. The individual statues, 230 cm high and weighing 2 tons, represent the patrons of miners and the patrons against the plague - St. František Xaverský, Rochus, Katarína, Jozef, Barbora, Sebastián and Rozácia (lying). They were replaced by artificial stone copies between 1978 and 1981, and the originals and some older copies are part of this exhibit. In the chapel, there are three copper baroque polychrome cartouches with coats of arms on the walls - the coat of arms of the Banské era, the imperial Habsburg and Lorraine - Tuscan coats of arms and the coat of arms of the city of Banská Štiavnica, on which two lizards are depicted. The city's coat of arms was created based on a legend that describes a shepherd tending his flock and seeing two lizards crawling out from under a stone. One was gold and the other silver. After lifting the stone, he found gold and silver.

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Model of the altar of Master MS from 1506

The exhibition is located in the reconstructed environment of the former Gothic sacristy with a cross vault, fragments of the original window... The modern mock-up approximates in half size the photographic form of seven late Gothic panels with themes of the Marian and Christological cycle, which became famous in Europe through the personality of an anonymous medieval artist and the city of Banská Štiavnica. 

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The Art of Blacksmiths

Among the most developed crafts in Banská Štiavnica was blacksmithing. The statutes of the blacksmith's guild were approved in 1589, and it reached its greatest growth in the period of the so-called Golden age of Banská Štiavnica in the 18th century. The most dominant personality of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was Karol Fizely, whose workshop created almost all important blacksmith works in the city (e.g. the grounds of the Mining Academy, entrance gates to cemeteries, grave crosses, lattice gates of houses).

The exhibition is located on three floors of the North Tower (18th-century blacksmith's moss, locksmith's products, window grilles, signboards, mine hanging scales, lamps, candlesticks, canopies, etc.), and includes installed wrought iron and cast grave crosses from the period of the 18th-20th centuries.

Noteworthy is e.g. pseudo-gothic tombstone with 5 cast-iron columns of František Schillinger, an important mining and military doctor in the second half of the 19th century. He eliminated the typhus epidemic, the author of works on cholera and first aid for miners, the founder of the Banská Štiavnica medical and natural science society.

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Bell tower with a view

The core of the current tower is a late Gothic gate tower with a square plan. The ground floor formed the original passage, which was entered on its eastern side through a portal and a drawbridge. The interior is vaulted with a late Gothic mesh vault, above the portal with the year 1482.

During the Renaissance reconstruction, a staircase was additionally cut into the wall thickness of the late Gothic west wall of the tower between the portals of the first floor. In the 16th century, the tower was supplemented with the second floor today with embrasures. In the exhibition space on the 2nd floor of the tower, the older original tower clocks of the Banská Štiavnica towers are presented, which were replaced by new, more modern ones in the 19th century.

The Baroque construction stage represents the completion of the development of the tower construction. The castle complex lost its importance as a city fortification, and the tower became a bell tower. The firing range on the south side of the facade was covered with a baroque sundial. There are three bells on the third floor, a Gothic one, a Renaissance one repaired in 1732 and a Baroque one from the second half of the 18th century. Above the third floor of the tower, a low floor ends with a clockwork in a cast iron structure with brass gears and wooden cylinders. The entire tower is finished with an onion-shaped copper roof.

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Tombstones built into the wall opposite the entrance to the bell tower

1. Double White Stone (Georgius Sorau) God's Admonition (year 1516)

2. On a plate with a relief of a human head (Juraj Cerendel) Comoros count and magistrate (year 1479)

3. On a plate with two coats of arms (Ján Hohel) Count of Comoros and a burgher (year 1480)

4. On a board with a human skeleton and scythe (Erasmus Rossel) Count of Comoros, burgher, miner and magistrate (year 1520)

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