Opening hours: Thursday 11am-6pm, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the second Tuesday of month 9am-3pm; Closed: Monday and other Tuesdays and the second Saturday of month.
It was not until 1945 that the present-day Historical Museum of the City of Cracow, originally opened in 1899 as a Division of the Old Records Office in Cracow, was granted a status of an independent establishment. Nowadays the Museum manages several divisions which preserve and present holdings in specific areas of the history of the town, including the history of Jews at the Old Synagogue, the history of the theatre at the House under the Cross and history of the Shooting Fraternity at the Celestat. The Museum's main location is at the Krzysztofory, the work of an architect Jakub Sollari who joined together three Gothic houses in the Marketplace and redesigned them as a Baroque palace.
The holdings are related to the history and art of Cracow, and include sixteenth through twentieth century city maps; paintings, prints and photographs documenting the appearance of the town across the periods; guild objects and works by Cracow artisans; portraits of Cracow's inhabitants from the sixteenth to the twentieth century; fourteenth through twentieth century weapons; a collection of sixteenth through twentieth century clocks; famous Cracow shopkas (nativity scenes); items related to the theatre; Judaica; objects commemorative of the Polish uprisings of the nineteenth century and of World Wars I and II.
The main building houses an exhibition on the History and Culture of Cracow, a collection of the militaria (missile weapons, firearms, defence and edged weapons) and of clocks and watches. The townhall tower in the Marketplace is the venue of the Photographs of the Marketplace exhibition.
Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa
Rynek Główny 35
31-011 Kraków
Region: woj. małopolskie
Phone: (+48 12) 61 92 300
Phone/Fax: (+48 12) 422 32 64
WWW: www.mhk.pl
Email: dyrekcja@mhk.pl