Inaugurated in 1906, the Dr. Nicolae Minovici Museum is the first museum of folk art in Bucharest. Functioning initially as a private institution, the museum was fully opened to the public in 1914 and donated to the city of Bucharest in 1936. Passionate about traditional Romanian artworks, Professor Dr. Nicolae Minovici was an internationally recognised scientist, who founded the first emergency hospital in Romania. The museum’s collection includes furniture and wooden items, pottery, old icons and decorated eggs, traditional costumes and fabrics, music instruments and various household objects.

It has over 4,000 authentic pieces from different ethnographic areas of Romania, collected by Dr. Nicolae Minovici between 1900 and 1940, and over 2,500 Romanian ceramic objects produced in pottery workshops that disappeared after 1950. The museum’s building is one of the first neo-Romanian constructions in Bucharest, built in 1905 by the architect Cristofi Cerchez at the doctor’s request. It was the first urban project in Bucharest designed to be a museum.