Tucked into a historic farmhouse in the small town of Skalná, this compact museum tells the surprising story of earthquakes right here in the Czech Republic. It's the country's only museum dedicated to seismic activity, and it sits in a region that genuinely shakes.

The area around Cheb, together with the neighbouring German Vogtland, is the only place in the Czech Republic with regular earthquake activity, known for so-called earthquake swarms - hundreds of weaker tremors occurring over days or months. The museum opened in December 2015 to mark the 30th anniversary of the strongest recorded swarm, which struck over the winter of 1985/1986 and reached a magnitude of 4.6. Housed in two ground-floor rooms of a historic farmstead dating back to 1541 on České ulice, the exhibition packs in posters tracing the history of earthquake observation, from old hand-drawn records to modern seismographic charts, plus real measuring instruments, some of which visitors can try out themselves.

• Skalná town centre - the museum stands directly on České ulice, close to Vildštejn Castle, an easy few-minute walk from the centre

• Visits only by prior appointment or during events organised by the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences
• Some instruments can be tried out hands-on
• One of the Academy's seismic monitoring stations is housed in an old adit within the granite massif beneath Vildštejn Castle in Skalná

It's worth knowing that deep in that granite tunnel beneath the castle, scientists are still listening to the tremors of the earth today - a quiet reminder that this corner of Bohemia is geologically alive.