The House of Collections Museum (Muzeul Casa Colecțiilor) is a history museum in Galați housed in the former Ținc Pharmacy, a richly decorated building from the turn of the 20th century. The museum is part of the Paul Păltănea History Museum and combines the restored pharmacy interior with exhibitions drawn from several of its specialist collections.
Pharmacist Constantin Ținc obtained permission to construct the building in 1899, with the ground floor intended for his pharmacy and laboratory and the upper levels for his family residence and service rooms. Ținc had worked as a pharmacist in Galați since 1887 and also became active in public life, serving several terms as mayor of the city and later as senator for Covurlui. The pharmacy remained in use after his ownership and continued operating in the building until 1989.
The building has a strongly decorative façade influenced by Viennese architecture, combining exposed brick with floral stucco ornament. Molded decoration frames the windows and entrance and continues across the upper part of the façade, while imitation columns emphasize several of the openings. Its original arrangement reflected the building’s dual function, with commercial and laboratory spaces below and residential rooms above.
Safety concerns forced the pharmacy to close in 1989, after which the building underwent a long restoration between 1994 and 2006. It entered the administration of the Galați History Museum in 2002 and opened as the House of Collections Museum in 2008. A further restoration and exhibition project began in 2017, and the museum reopened to visitors in November 2025.
The museum’s exhibitions now spread across several themes the former pharmacy alone. The ground floor reconstructs the atmosphere of Constantin Ținc’s early 20th-century pharmacy, while other displays present ethnographic material from the Lower Danube region, medals, old books and historical documents relating to Galați from the 17th to 20th centuries. Separate sections are devoted to the European Commission of the Danube and to aviation pioneer Smaranda Brăescu, and the museum also includes a philatelic collection.
