The 2025 Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded to Euskararen Etxea (the House of the Basque Language) in Bilbao, Spain. The museum was selected by the Culture Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), meeting today.
The House of the Basque Language is a small museum, located in a working-class neighborhood outside the centre of Bilbao. The museum showcases the challenge of preserving a language. Visitors can listen, read and sing in the Basque language. The exhibition is presented in four languages – Euskera, Spanish, English and French – which allows visitors to trace the similarities and mutual influences between these European languages.
According to the committee representative for the Museum Prize, Constantinos Efstathiou (Cyprus, SOC): “The Euskararen Etxea is a grassroots initiative with inter-generational activities to promote the transmission and use of the Basque language. It is a ‘big-little museum’, with only three permanent staff members who manage many activities and a network of partners, including the University of Bilbao, and many civil society associations.”
The Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to a museum judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding of European cultural heritage, the promotion of respect for human rights and democracy, bridging cultures, overcoming social and political borders, broadening visitors' knowledge and understanding of contemporary societal issues and exploring ideas of democratic citizenship.
The prize forms part of the European Museum of the Year Awards. Recent winners of the prize include the Sybir Memorial Museum in Bialystok, Poland (2024), the Workers Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark (2023) and Nano Nagle Place in Cork, Ireland (2022).
The 2024 Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded to Sybir Memorial Museum (Bialystok, Poland). The museum was selected by the Culture Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), meeting today.
Sybir Memorial Museum tells the story of successive deportations of people from Poland to Siberia, northern Russia and Kazakhstan during the Soviet occupation and the division of Poland in the period 1940-41, and deportations from Poland during the communist period of the Soviet Union after the Second World War until 1952.
According to the committee representative for the Museum Prize, Constantinos Efstathiou (Cyprus, SOC): “The museum works with the strong narrative of deportation, reducing research-based material to the essentials, working with strong spatial images that give a voice to the selected authentic objects. The museum’s ability to convey history through workshops, events, media, publications and new formats is impressive and brings it to a broad audience.”
The Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to a museum judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding of European cultural heritage, the promotion of respect for human rights and democracy, bridging cultures, overcoming social and political borders, broadening visitors' knowledge and understanding of contemporary societal issues and exploring ideas of democratic citizenship.
The prize forms part of the European Museum of the Year Awards. Recent winners of the prize include the Workers Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark (2023), Nano Nagle Place in Cork, Ireland (2022), and the Gulag History Museum in Moscow, Russian Federation (2021).
The 2023 Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded to the Workers Museum (Copenhagen, Denmark). The museum was selected by the Culture Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), meeting in Paris on 5 December 2022.
During a ceremony held in the Palais de l’Europe on 25 April 2023, Tiny Kox, President of the Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) awarded the Prize to Søren Bak-Jensen, Director of the Workers Museum /Arbejdermuseet.
The Workers Museum collects, researches and communicates the development of living and working conditions for Danish wage workers during the past 150 years, and the development of the Danish labour movement. It combines the history of this symbolic building and the history of the Danish Labour movement with present-day concerns about how workers’ culture could be more relevant to society.
According to the committee's representative for the Museum Prize, Roberto Rampi (Italy, SOC), the museum “raises the themes of dialogue, the future development of democracy, climate change, an equal society, the labour market and political activism; it provides spaces for meetings and encourages people to gather. The museum has the potential to become a beacon of activism, as it was in the past.”
The Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to a museum judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding of European cultural heritage, the promotion of respect for human rights and democracy, bridging cultures, overcoming social and political borders, broadening visitors' knowledge and understanding of contemporary societal issues and exploring ideas of democratic citizenship.
The prize forms part of the European Museum of the Year Awards. Recent winners of the prize include Nano Nagle Place in Cork (2022), the Gulag History Museum in Moscow (2021) and the National Museum of Secret Surveillance “House of Leaves” in Tirana (2020).
The 2022 Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded to Nano Nagle Place (Cork, Ireland). The museum was selected by the Culture Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) meeting today.
Nano Nagle Place not only commemorates the educational and religious work of Nano Nagle, who founded a school for the Catholic poor in Cork at a time when it was illegal, but equally it continues the same mission to provide support and care for people in need. The charity which runs the museum continues the order’s educational and spiritual work through the Cork Migrant Centre, providing services for asylum seekers and refugees, and the Lantern, which runs community education and development services.
According to committee representative for the Museum Prize, Roberto Rampi (Italy, SOC), “despite being rooted in the specific religious tradition of Roman Catholicism, with nuns still living on the site, there is a strong sense of caring based on need, not on doctrine. Nano Nagle Place has a very strong and coherent mission which is in line with the Council of Europe’s human rights values and principles”.
The Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to a museum judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding of European cultural heritage, the promotion of respect for human rights and democracy, bridging cultures, overcoming social and political borders, broadening visitors' knowledge and understanding of contemporary societal issues and exploring ideas of democratic citizenship.
The prize forms part of the European Museum of the Year Awards. Recent winners of the prize include the Gulag History Museum in Moscow (2021), the National Museum of Secret Surveillance “House of Leaves” in Tirana (2020) and the Museum of Communication in Bern (2019).
The 2021 Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded to Gulag History Museum (Moscow, Russian Federation). The museum was selected by the Culture Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) meeting today.
The Gulag History Museum documents mass repression and advocates for political freedom. As a human rights museum, it has a dual focus on the crimes of the state and the fate of its citizens, with an emphasis on how the victims maintained their dignity under dehumanising conditions. The museum’s programmes are designed to expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights today and in the future.
According to committee representative for the Museum Prize, Roberto Rampi (Italy, SOC), “the Gulag History Museum tackles with rare honesty some of the very difficult issues about human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the 20th century, while establishing clear links with the challenging democratic and human rights issues we face today in Europe. This museum can serve as a model to other museums in Europe to create a well-documented and moving memory of the past and stimulate reflection on democratic citizenship, particularly for younger generations.”
The Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to a museum judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding of European cultural heritage, the promotion of respect for human rights and democracy, bridging cultures, overcoming social and political borders, broadening visitors' knowledge and understanding of contemporary societal issues and exploring ideas of democratic citizenship.
The prize forms part of the European Museum of the Year Awards. Recent winners of the prize include the National Museum of Secret Surveillance “House of Leaves” in Tirana, Albania (2020), the Museum of Communication in Bern, Switzerland (2019) and the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (2018).