History on Display: Polish Museums That Made a Mark

Widok z galerii "Wyzwania nowoczesności" wchodzącej w skład wystawy stałej w Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich, fot. Magda Starowieyska, default, History on Display: Polish Museums That Made a Mark, View from the 'Challenges of Modernity' gallery included in the permanent exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, phot, center, #000000

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According to its definition, a museum not only stores material testaments of culture and history, but also develops and promotes them, thereby serving an educational purpose. From among over a thousand museums in Poland, we’ve chosen the ones which did and continue to do groundbreaking work presenting events and phenomena related to Polish history.

According to a report released in 2019 by the National Institute for Museums and Public Collections, there are precisely 1111 museums in Poland. Before the pandemic limited our cultural activities, Polish museums were visited by over 40 million visitors each year. What makes them so compelling? Sometimes it’s the extraordinary collections, sometimes it’s the attractive multimedia expositions allowing us to delve into the past. The appeal of some of these institutions springs from their outstanding architecture, infused by history; others offer an opportunity to see rare exhibits.

Creating a list of most important Polish museums isn’t an easy task, as all of them are unique, and all of them present important or interesting pieces of history. However, some of them provide us with truly extraordinary ways to understand Poland’s past.

Poland’s first museum

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The Temple of the Sybil in Puławy, photo: Monkpress / East News

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The first Polish museum was established in 1801. Back then, Poland was non-existent – its territories were under the Partitions – and that was precisely the reason why Princess Izabela Czartoryska decided to found it. She wished to sustain Polish identity. In the Temple of the Sybil, built on the premises of her estate in Puławy, the aristocrat began to collect and exhibit national relics, such as banners from the Battle of Grunwald, Stefan Batory’s sabre, items belonging to Prince Józef Poniatowski, Stefan Czarniecki, and the noble Lubomirski and Czartoryski families, amongst others. Czartoryska’s motto was over the entrance to the temple: ‘From the past, for the future’.

Shortly before the outbreak of the November Uprising in 1830, the collection was evacuated from Puławy to Paris, so as the exhibits would avoid being confiscated by the Russians after the failure of the uprising. At the end of the 19^th century, Izabela Czartoryska’s exhibits were transported to Kraków, giving rise to the Princess Czartoryski Museum collection. The collection, currently a branch of the National Museum in Kraków, which underwent a meticulous renovation in 2019. Now, all the collections are exhibited within modern, stylish spaces. The most valuable piece in the collection is the portrait Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci.

Poland’s most popular museum

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Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanów, Warsaw, photo: Arkadiusz Ziółek / East News

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For years, the Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanów in Warsaw has been at the very top of the list of Poland’s most frequently visited museums. The baroque royal residence from the end of the 17^th century is visited by over 3 million tourists each year. The museum at Wilanów has plenty of attractions: it offers magnificent baroque and rococo royal quarters with their lavish interiors preserved, artworks from the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries, as well as an impressive French garden, decorated with numerous sculptures.

The palace complex also includes the Polish Poster Museum, located in the spot previously occupied by the royal riding stables. The Poster Museum, opened in 1968, is a branch of the National Museum and world’s first such museum, which is fitting, due to the country’s internationally-acclaimed Polish Poster School.

A museum of Poland’s halcyon days

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The Wawel Royal Castle, photo: promotional materials

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The Wawel Royal Castle could probably be deemed Poland’s most important museum. Set on a hill, the building complex, which was established as far back as the 11^th century, was built to serve a defensive function. From the end of the 11^th century until the beginning of the 17^th century, the Wawel Castle was a royal residence, and constituted the centre of power and spiritual life on Polish lands. Almost every ruler who sat on the Polish throne contributed to the refurbishment of the Wawel, meaning that the castle presents a jumble of architectural styles. Wawel’s oldest architectural landmarks exemplify the Romanesque style, whereas Sigismund’s Chapel, the pearl of the Polish Renaissance, was added onto the Gothic cathedral in the 16^th century. The castle’s courtyard underwent a similar transformation at that time; the last king residing at the Wawel, Sigismund III Vasa, rebuilt one of the castle’s wings in the style of early baroque prior to moving Poland’s capital to Warsaw.

Today, the relics to be found on Wawel Hill include not only collections of royal insignia, artworks and antique handicrafts, but also the extraordinary space – most notably the castle and the cathedral. The complex is all the more valuable due to the fact that it’s a testament to the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s greatest glory.

A museum of painful history

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Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau Former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp, photo: Artur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images

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Some associate museums with big adventures or communing with art, others – with a boring slog around subsequent halls. But museums serve a much more important role than just providing entertainment: they document the most difficult, most painful past – they are places meant to remind us of horrifying and evil moments in our history, so as to ensure history does not repeat itself.

Such a role is certainly fulfilled by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Oświęcim at the Nazi German concentration and death camp, which has been preserved and made available to visitors. The 200-hectare site of the concentration camp was turned into a museum in 1947; in 1979, the grounds of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. So as to never forget.

The museum that changed other museums

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Warsaw Rising Museum, photo: Sławomir Kamiński / AG

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On 31^st July 2004, right before the 60^th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, the Warsaw Rising Museum was opened to great fanfare in Poland’s capital. It’s a significant place for several reasons. The facility commemorates one of the most important and most tragic events in the history of Warsaw, which had a huge and lasting impact on the city’s landscape, and that remains the point of reference for various initiatives within the city.

The museum, incorporated into the former City Tramway Powerhouse, also influenced the way that modern museums in Poland are designed today. The main exhibition, designed by Mirosław Nizio’s studio was one of the first Polish attempts to tell history by combining multimedia with exhibits on such a grand scale. ‘The main elements of the exposition are large format photographs, monitors and screens’, emphasise the creators of the museum, drawing attention to the fact that the goal of the exhibition was not only to showcase their collection but also to make it possible for visitors to experience the atmosphere of the past.

The enormous popularity of the Warsaw Rising Museum showed that the public were enamoured by this way of presenting history. From that moment on, multimedia expositions began appearing in more and more museums wanting to move into the 21^st century.

A castle museum

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The Castle Museum in Malbork, photo: Robert Neumann / Forum

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Although the collections of the Malbork Castle Museum are comprised of a whopping 40,000 thousand exhibits – including sculptures, paintings, handicrafts, as well as an extraordinary assortment of amber craftworks – it’s the castle’s impressive architecture that attracts up to 800,000 tourists per year.

Situated on the Nogat riverbank, the enormous mediaeval brick castle combines the traits of a fortress and those of a presentable residence. The royal complex, built between the 13^th and the 15^th centuries and consisting of a variety of buildings, which constituted the residence of the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order from 1309 to 1457.

The castle was turned into a museum in 1961, and in 1997 was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List – as the biggest preserved mediaeval castle in all of Europe.

An avant-garde museum

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The Neo-Plasticism Hall at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, photo: P. Tomczyk / Wikipedia

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The Museum Sztuki in Łódź was established in 1930, which makes it world’s second oldest museum of modern art. It’s unique also due to its co-originators and co-creators, the avant-garde artists affiliated with the a.r. group (which included Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro and Henryk Stażewski, among others). They assembled the collection of significant works of modern art that became the basis for the exhibition, they also developed a particular conception of the museum, which was meant to constitute not only a collection of exhibits, but also a space for creative discussions, exchange of knowledge and forming new artistic paths.

Nowadays, the most prominent trace of these pioneer ideas is the so-called Neo-Plasticism Hall, designed in 1946 by Władysław Strzemiński as an exposition space for the European avant-garde assembled in the a.r. group in the 1930s. Each and every element of the hall matters, from the colour surfaces on the walls and the floor to the placement of particular artworks – the design of the interior is a work of art in its own right.

An underground museum

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Krakow Saltworks – 'Royal Enterprise' exhibition, Krakow Saltworks Museum in Wieliczka, photo: Artur Grzybowski

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Wystawa Żupy Krakowskie - przedsiębiorstwo królewskie, Muzeum Żup Krakowskich Wieliczka, fot. Artur Grzybowski

Plenty of Polish museums tell us about the history and development of industry, but the Kraków Saltworks Museum in Wieliczka, along with the salt mine and the Saltworks Castle are the most special among them. The museum, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978, teaches us a lot about the history of salt mining and the significant role that the mineral played in the development of civilisation.

The studies and collection of the Saltworks Museum cover the time span from prehistory, when the history of salt-making began, up until contemporary times – the extraction of rock salt in Wieliczka was called to a halt in 1964. Additionally, the nine-storey underground museum, the largest one in Europe (with an area of 7481 square metres and the depth of 327 metres) provides an opportunity to commune with extraordinary art: you can visit impressive underground chambers with rich sculptured ornaments, a chapel, a train station, a ballroom and even a hotel. Interestingly, the mine also holds the status of a spa – just staying the underground halls is beneficial for the respiratory tract.

The marine museum

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View of the Granary in Ołowianka and the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, photo: Cezary Wojtkowski / Forum

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The year 2020 marked the 60^thanniversary of the establishment of National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, one that comprises several branches which employ various ways to tell us about the significance of the sea for Polish history and culture. And so, one of the elements of the museum is Gdańsk’s famous Żuraw (Crane), a historic harbour crane – a relic of the time when Gdańsk constituted one of Europe’s most crucial harbours. We are reminded of the very same period by the garners on Ołowianka Island, which contain exhibitions concerned with Poles’ contributions to the development of marine trade, shipbuilding, the shipyard industry and marine archaeology, as well as a collection of marine paintings.

Thumbnail — Jacht "Dar Pomorza", fot. Tomasz Jodłowski/Reporter/East News

The museum units also include ships, such as the sailing ship Dar Pomorza (Pomerania’s Gift) and the bulk cargo ship Sołdek. Meanwhile, the Shipwreck Conservation Centre in Tczew, which opened in 2016, transmits knowledge about how to handle historic and modern boats and ships.

Gdańsk’s Żuraw adjoins the Maritime Culture Centre, established in 2012 – a modern, multimedia facility that educates various audiences, from children to foreign tourists, on maritime matters. The National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk also comprises the Fisheries Museum in Hel, the Vistula River Museum in Tczew and the Vistula Lagoon Museum in Sztutów. All of these facilities perfectly show the Baltic Sea's significant and multi-dimensional role in Polish history and culture.

Poland’s most beautiful museum

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POLIN Museum in Warsaw, photo: Arkadiusz Ziółek / East News

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Poland’s entrance into the structures of the European Union triggered the emergence of a new era of museum buildings. Numerous institutions used the European funds to raise new, modern headquarters, which contributed not only to the increase in the quality of museum spaces, but also to the development of architecture at large. Most of Poland’s newly-built museums constitute interesting, award-winning instances of contemporary architecture.

It’s impossible to choose a single most beautiful museum building, but the top ones certainly include the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, designed by the Finnish studio Lahdelma & Mahlamäki, made available to visitors in 2013. The museum itself was opened a year before the permanent exhibition was ready – which proves that the architecture of the building was treated as equally important to the exhibits. The building’s ascetic exterior and alluring interior, along with the effective multimedia exposition remain one of the key point on Warsaw’s tourist map, and the museum’s rich cultural programme also draws the inhabitants of the capital into the glass edifice.

An edible museum

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The Museum of Bread in Radzionków, photo: Marek Maruszak / Forum

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Most of us associate the word ‘museum’ with seriousness and pathos. However, there are museums in Poland that allow the visitors not only to feel relaxed, but also to rouse their senses other than just sight – museums that tell us the history of food and drink. The Oscypek Museum in Zakopane, the Living Museum of Gingerbread in Toruń, the Tyskie Brewing Museum (as well as other museum exhibitions devoted to historic breweries), the Museum of Bread in Radzionków, the historic Mineral Water Drinking Rooms in numerous Polish spas and many other cosy facilities allow us not only to learn the history of regional specialties but also – or perhaps more importantly – to try and taste them. Spiritual nourishment awaits the visitors of every museum, but some of them offer us the additional possibility to fill our stomachs.

Originally written in Polish, translated by Anna Potoczny, May 2021

Language English

Polish Museums

czartoryski museum

The Wilanów Palace Museum

wawel castle

Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

warsaw rising museum

Malbork castle

muzeum sztuki in łódź

Wieliczka

National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk

Polin Museum

bread museum