The Lublin Museum
Muzeum Lubelskie w Lublinie
ul. Zamkowa 9, 20-117 Lublin
Director: mgr Zygmunt Nasalski
tel. (+48 81) 532 50 01-3
tel./fax (+48 81) 532 17 43
www.zamek.lublin.pl

Opening hours: Closed Mondays, Tuesdays and public holidays; open Wednesday-Saturday, 9am-4pm, Sunday, 9am-5pm.

Established in 1906, the Lublin Museum presently boasts one of Poland's richest multi-faceted collections. The Museum's main location inside the Royal Castle collects and displays archeological, ethnographical, military, numismatic and art exhibits.

The archeological holdings span all ages and feature some unique exhibits, such as the nearly 3,700 years old Egyptian faience beads treasure of 1,000 items and an amber treasure containing amber artefacts and lumps from Bassonia.

The ethnographical exhibition has an interesting "Gallery of Folk Sculpture and Painting" with nineteenth century folk paintings and religious sculpture, including a large collection of effigies of Christ the Sorrowful and icons from a nonexistent Uniate church. Of interest are also the original Tarnogrod corsets dating back from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

The permanent military exhibition contains European and Oriental offensive and defensive weapons ranging in date from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. There is also a "Gallery of Polish Historical and Battle Scene Painting".

The Museum's most numerous section, the numismatics, are presented at the "Coins and Medals on Polish Lands from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century" exhibition.

The art collection contains seventeenth through nineteenth century Polish painting, including the famous portrait of king Stanislaw August in coronation robes by Bacciarelli, nineteenth century landscapes by Jozef Chelmonski, historical canvases by Jan Matejko, and paintings by the leading artistis of the Young Poland movement. The collection of foreign painting, spanning the seventeenth through nineteenth century, has mostly European Baroque works, including the outstanding Pilate washing off his hands by Hendrick ter Brugghen, dating from 1617. Decorative arts include a precious collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century Lublin silver, eighteenth century belts, as well as Polish and West-European porcelain. There is also a collection of drawings, mostly by Polish artists of the eighteenth to twentieth century. The exhibits are shown in the "Gallery of the Polish Painting of the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century", the "Gallery of Foreign Painting of the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century" and at the exhibition of Polish and "Foreign Decorative Arts of the Fourteenth to Twentieth Century".

The object that has been attracting the attention of the whole world is the restored Church of St Trinity, the former chapel of the Royal Castle. The interiors of this fourteenth century Gothic Roman Catholic temple are covered by magnificent fifteenth century Russian Byzantine paintings of Passion and Old and New Testament scenes. The chapel's founder, King Wladyslaw Jagiello, has been depicted twice. The paintings were discovered by chance under a layer of plaster in 1899. Their unveiling and restoration lasted intermittently from 1903 to 1997, and are explained through an exhibition entitled "An Introduction to the History of Restoration of the Church of St Trinity".

The holdings documenting the town's history are preserved and displayed at permanent exhibitions in the following divisions of the Lublin Museum: Museum of History of the Town of Lublin, pl. lokietka 3, tel. (0-81) 532 60 01; Museum of History of the Townhall and the Crown Tribunal, Rynek 1, tel. (0-81) 532 68 66; Museum of Martyrology in the House under the Clock, ul. Uniwersytecka 1, tel. (0-81) 533 36 78 (exhibition entitled "History of the Prison in the Lublin Castle and in the Former Gestapo Building" ("The House under the Clock").

The Lublin Museum has also two literary divisions: Wincenty Pol's Manor House, ul. Kalinowszczyzna 13, tel. (0-81) 747 24 13 contains exhibits related to the poet who was born in 1838 and died in 1893, and The Jozef Czechowicz Museum of Literature, pl. Narutowicza 10, tel. (0-81) 742 24 13 houses a biographicall exhibition of the celebrated poet of the interwar period.

Browsing history