The castle is one of the most valuable and at the same time one of the most impressive pieces of secular Renaissance architecture in Poland. It is famous most of all for its beautiful cloistered rectangular inner courtyard (which has given it its nickname, "Little Wawel"), its unique portals and the richly decorated attic on its front elevation.
The museum's collection contains items related to the history of the city of Bialystok, whose original city plan was drawn up according to the rules of Baroque composition. Jan Klemens Branicki's palace was built in the same style, and was the grandest aristocratic residence of eighteenth-century Poland, called the "Versailles of Podlasie".
The museum was originally founded as the Regional Museum in Bialystok in 1949, and in 1999 was renamed the Podlaskie Museum. It is the largest museum complex in Podlasie, which has the following branches: the Museum of History and the Alfons Karny Museum of Sculpture in Bialystok; Museum in Tykocin; Museum in Bielsk Podlaski; Museum of Palace Interiors in Choroszcz; the Bialystok Museum of Village Life and its branch in Suprasl.
The museum is dedicated to the life and work of Alfons Karny, who was born in 1901 in Bialystok and worked in Warsaw. He is recognised as one of the best sculptors of the "Warsaw school" of sculpture.
The settlement of the people of the Lusatian culture discovered on a promontory on Biskupinskie Lake dates back about 2500 years. An archaeological preserve was founded here before the Second World War, and grew constantly, now covering 24 hectares (59.3 acres). Tools, vessels, decorations, weapons, and remnants of plants that were cultivated and the skeletons of animals that were raised at Biskupin are all on display in the exhibition pavilion.
The museum specialises in collecting artefacts related to the history of the city of Brzeg and its environs, as was as that of the Silesian Piasts and the Piast tradition in that region.
Since it was created in 1880, the museum has principally collected artefacts from the Bydgoszcz and environs including items from archaeological excavations, city documents, artistic crafts, militaria, weapons and medals. During the interwar period, a new section was created for Polish art (painting, sculpture and graphics), with a special emphasis on local artists.
The palace in Choroszcz was the summer residence of the crown hetman and castellan of Krakow, Jan Klemens Branicki (1689-1771), a powerful aristocrat raised and educated in a French cultural milieu.
The monastery at Jasna Gora is a symbolic place for Poles, because it was here that the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary is located the patron saint of Poland, to whom the faithful from all over the world make their pilgrimage. The monastery was built in the fourteenth century, and from the seventeenth century was used as a fortress, which is famous for its heroic defense during the Polish-Swedish wars in the seventeenth century.
Painters, writers and poets have often immortalised the image of the manor house, at one time such a common sight in the Polish countryside Z wooden, one-storeyed, and with a characteristic porch supported by two columns, having a gabled roof.
The museum opened in 1968 in a small paper mill dating back to 1605, the only such historic mill left in the world.
In the early eighteenth century, it was built next to the "Low Mill", and both produced wove paper (known in Europe as "VŽlin") that became well known all across Europe the Duszniki mill even supplied paper to royal and imperial courts.
The Museum of Elblag is housed in the buildings of the first Polish arts and humanities secondary school, established in the sixteenth century on the former premises of the Teutonic Order's settlement and castle dating from the thirteenth century.
The Nicolaus Copernicus Museum was established in Frombork in 1984. It was in this town that Kopernik - the great astronomer and the Canon of the Warmian Chapter - lived and worked from 1510 to 1543.
The opening of the restored Artus Court was a highlight of the Gdansk Millennium festivities in 1997. Constructed in 1476-81 in the Gothic style, Artus Court is the only building of its kind to have survived to date. In the past a number of such courts were built in the cities on the Baltic coast as meeting places for rich burghers. They were given the name of Arthur, the Celtic king revered by knights as well as by burghers, whose ambition was to live by some of the standards of the knightly ethos.
Established in 1960, the Central Maritime Museum is nowadays housed in several historical buildings in the centre of Gdansk These include the Great Crane - the former port crane from 1444 - and three port granaries ranging in date from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, called the Miedz (Copper), the Panna (Virgin) and the Oliwski. The Museum of Fishery on the Hel Spit, the Museum of the Vistula River in Tczew and two ships, the "Soldek" and the "Dar Pomorza", are the divisions of the Gdansk-based museum.
The present-day Ethnographical Museum was originally an Ethnographical Department within the structure of the Pomeranian Museum. Moved in 1979 to the Abbots' Palace in Gdansk-Oliwa, it became an independent division of the National Museum in Gdansk, to be moved again to its current premises in the eighteenth-century Abbatial Granary and re-named the Ethnographical Museum – Division of the National Museum.
The Historical Museum of the City of Gdansk was opened in the restored Gothic and Renaissance building of the Main Town Hall of the City of Gdansk in 1970. Over time the Museum has acquired other historical buildings to house its other departments.
The buildings housing the Jailing Museum were constructed in the Middle Ages as a part of the town's defence system. Having been redesigned in the Renaissance style in 1587-60, they were turned into a prison and execution grounds.
The Gdansk Museum of Burgher Culture is housed in an eighteenth century house, once the property of the affluent Uphagen family. There has been a museum here since 1911, although it was then called the Museum of Burgher Interiors.
The National Museum in Gdansk is the heir of the City Museum (Stadtmuseum) and of the Musem of Decorative Arts (Kunstgewerbemuseum). Established in 1872 through the efforts of Rudolf Freitag, the lecturer at the Royal School of Fine Arts, it reopened after World War II as the City Museum, it was called the Pomeranian Museum until 1950 and was elevated to the rank of a National Museum in 1972.
Originally established by the Gdansk Artists' Association as the G.N. Gallery in 1977, the Gallery was later renamed the Gdansk Gallery of Photography, and has been a Division of the Gdansk National Museum since 1995.
Established in 1971, the Oceanographic Museum and Marine Aquarium in Gdynia is the only museum of its kind in Poland. Its varied and comprehensive collections of fish, marine and fresh water invertebrates as well as of turtles from various regions of the world attract crowds of tourists from Poland and abroad.
The Goluchow Castle, originally a defence structure, was built for Rafal Leszczynski around 1650, to be turned into a stately magnate residence by Rafal's son, Waclaw, one of the Republic of Poland - Lithuania's most prominent citizens.
The Janowiec Castle was built for Mikolaj Firlej in the early sixteenth century. Later that century the architect Santi Gucci turned it into a manneristic residence combining features of both a castle and a palace.
Established in 1914, the Karkonosze Museum of Jelenia Gora reopened after World War II in 1948 and since 1968 has specialised in collecting decorative glass.
The Przypkowskis first made their astronomical and gnomonic collection available to visit by those interested in 1909. The Museum is still partly housed in their family house, although the holdings are nowadays also displayed inside the adjacent eighteenth century pharmacy building. The Museum has always been managed by members of this world-famous family of gnomonic experts.
While the history of the Kalisz Museum goes back to 1907, its holdings had to be reconstructed from scratch after World War II. Reopened in 1947, it was granted the status of a District Museum in 1976 and has since been managing its several divisions, including the Archeological Reservation at Zawodzie, Maria Dabrowska's House in Russow, the Tadeusz Kulisiewicz Gallery in Kalisz, the Palace in Lewkowo (museum of interiors) and the Fryderyk Chopin Chamber of Music in Antonin.
The Centre preserves a collection of works by Tadeusz Kulisiewicz, the internationally acclaimed Polish graphic artist. The holdings contain items from Kulisiewicz's most important series of drawings and prints.
The Karpacz Museum was established in 1995, with the collection of toys assembled by Henryk Tomaszewski forming the core of its holdings. A celebrated artist and creator of the famous Wroclaw-based Pantomime Theatre, Tomaszewski lived in Karpacz since 1968.
The Museum was established through a resolution of the Silesian Parliament in 1929. In 1939 the Germans took most of the collections away to Bytom, where the Museum reopened after World War II. The Public Committee for the Restoration of the Silesian Museum, established in 1981, managed to restore the Museum to its previous location.
The Kazimierz Museum, opened in 1978, is the only museum of goldsmithery art in Poland. Contrary to what the name may suggest, but in line with the Polish tradition, it is not gold, but silver, that forms the core of the holdings. Indeed, the richest collection is that of the Polish silver extending from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. The Museum also preserves contemporary Polish silver. A valuble collection of ritual Jewish silver and West-European gold items completes the holdings.
The Museum was established in 1908 as a community-run institution of the Kielce Division of the Polish Nature and Heritage Society intended to document local archeology, history, nature and wildlife. In 1936 it adopted the name of the Museum Swietokrzyskie, and this name was used when it reopened after World War II. Although 1947 was the year of the musem's official revival, the Organisational Committee had been active since 1945, and the first exhibition was shown in 1946. Poland's eighth museum to be accorded the status of a national museum (in 1975).
The Slovinians were a small Pomeranian ethnic group. Related to the Kashubs, they are now extinct. The project of preserving evidence of Slovinian material culture was initiated in Kluki in 1963. The open air museum, situated within the Slovinian National Park, is a reconstruction of the traditional Slovinian village and consists of seven farms, a storage and a fisherman's hut.
The library and museum at Kornik were founded by Count Tytus Dzialynski and his son Jan, the nineteenth century owners of the castle to whom it owes its final shape based on Karl F. Schinkel's design.
At the turn of the nineteenth century Konstanty Zamoyski (1846-1923), a member of a distinguished aristocratic family, had the eighteenth-century, Baroque palace and park in Kozlowka redesigned to produce a large assembly consisting of the palace building, a chapel modelled on the royal one at Versailles, a theatre, two outhouses and two guardhouses, a stable and a coach house.
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.
In 1958 the Jewish Commune of Cracow handed over the restored building of the so-called Old Synagogue to the Historical Museum of the City of Cracow. The Old Synagogue had been built at Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter, in the second half of the sixteenth century and was re-designed in the twentieth century.
The house in which Jan Matejko, Poland's most prominent representative of historical painting, was born, lived and died, became his museum within a few years from his death, and has been a Division of the National Museum in Cracow since 1904.
The neoclassical Palace under the Cones, so called because of the recurring motif of pine cones in the architectural design of its interiors, was bought by Jozef Mehoffer in 1932.
Cracow's oldest university building, the Collegium Maius acquired its present-day shape in the fifteenth century. Reminiscent of the architecture of Italian universities of the time, the building has a quadrangle court and cloisters on the first floor, stretching along all of its wings.
Established in 1879, the National Museum in Cracow was first housed in the Sukiennice building, now the seat of one of its divisions. The construction of the Museum's so-called New Building started in 1934, but was interrupted by World War II and did not get completed until 1992. The holdings of several hundred thousand items are preserved not only in the Main Building but also in the divisions, nine of which are in Cracow alone.
The opening of the Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology was the initiative of Andrzej Wajda and his wife, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, the set designer, who donated for this purpose the Inamori Foundation Prize awarded to Wajda for his life achievement as film and theatre director in 1987. In 1988 the twin cities of Kyoto and Cracow set up the Kyoto-Cracow Foundation in Cracow, and a division was opened in Kyoto with the objective of raising money to build the premises of the Centre.
Established by Tadeusz Kantor in 1980, The Cricoteca collects and provides access to a variety of materials related to this original, world-famous artist of many talents - a painter, drawer, set designer, script writer and director, creator of the renowned Cricot 2 Theatre.
The Czartoryskis' collection, assembled by Izabela Czartoryska in the years 1801-1830 and by Wladyslaw Czartoryski in the 1840s and 1880s, first opened to the public in the nineteenth century. Initially exhibited at Pulawy, where Duchess Izabela had the first ever museum created in Poland, it was later moved to Cracow and became known as the Czartoryski Museum and Library.
The Nineteenth Century Polish Art Gallery is housed in the Sukiennice, a historical trading hall. Originally a fourteenth century Gothic building, the Sukiennice were first redesigned by Jan Maria Padovano in the mid-sixteenth century. The Renaissance attic with gargoyles comes from that period.
The Wawel Castle is Poland's greatest architectural treasure and a priceless national heritage monument. It was here that the Polish kings were crowned and buried. The Castle walls contain remains of pre-Romanesque, Romanesque and Gothic buildings, but its present-day style is that of the Renaissance. This appearance was given to the Castle by king Sigismund I the Old in the years 1507-36.
The Museum, devoted to one of the greatest, most talented and versatile Polish artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, was opened in 1983.
In 1952 the Historical Museum of the City of Cracow started to collect all kinds of objects related to the theatre. A permanent exhibition opened in 1969. Its present-day form, entitled "A History of the Cracow Theatre", was designed by Anna and Leszek Wajda in 1989.
The Podkarpackie Museum, opened in the sixteenth-century Renaissance Bishop's Palace in 1954, is famous especially for Europe's largest collection of kerosene lamps ranging in date from the second half of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century as well as for its holdings of applied and artistic glass manufactured in the Krosno glassworks since 1923.
The opening of The Nikifor Museum in Krynica was hailed the principal museum event of 1995. The Museum preserves paintings by Nikifor, the self-taught painter born around 1895, whose works were first discovered in the 1930s and, called naive art, earned fame in Poland and abroad.
Poland's largest open-air museum, the Museum of the First Piasts at Lednica includes the archeological reservation at Ostrow Lednicki (Lednicki Island) - a Historical Monument of the Polish Nation; a similar reservation in Giecz; the Lednicki Landscape Park; and the Wielkopolski Ethnographical Park.
Opened in the main town of the Copper District in 1962, the Museum of Copper has always specialised in the area of the mining, processing and use of non-ferrous metals. Called the Museum of Copper until 1975, it was later granted the status of a District Museum, but returned to its original name in 1996.
The battle of Legnica (Liegnitz) has been commemorated with an exhibition arranged inside the gothic Holy Trinity and Virgin Mary Church. The church was erected at the turn of the fourteenth century on the spot where the corpse of Henryk II Pobozny (the Pious), the king of Poland who had died in the battle fought by the Polish army against the Mongols at Legnica in 1241, was found.
Although the Leszno District Museum opened in 1950, it was not until 1961 that it moved into a building of its own, the so-called Pastor's House. This eighteenth century edifice now houses the permanent exhibitions of Historical, Archeological and Ethnographical Sections. Later the Museum acquired the next-door nineteenth century burgher house and installed the Gallery of Painting there. In 1993 the Museum established its Judaistic Section.
The palace was restored in 1972-87 and an exhibition of interiors restored to their original, classicist appearance opened on the so-called ceremonial floor in 1991.
The Warmia (Ermeland) Museum is housed in a castle dating from the second half of the fourteenth century. Until 1795 the castle was the residence of Warmian bishops, many of whom contributed to the history of Poland in remarkable ways.
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.
Erected in the seventeenth century, the lancut Castle has been re-designed a number of times. The buildings and the park now have the late nineteenth and early twentieth century appearance, whereas the interiors represent a variety of styles, from Baroque to eclectic to Art Nouveau.
It is only natural that The Central Museum of Textiles should be located in Lodz, the town being Poland's centre of the textile industry. The Museum opened in 1960 in the so-called White Factory, Poland's first automated multi-department mill. Erected by Ludwik Geyer in the nineteenth century, the bulding owes its name to its white-painted walls, standing apart from the brick buildings of that time.
Established in 1930, after World War II the Museum of Art moved to one of the three palaces of the Poznański family, a neo-Renaissance edifice designed by Adolf Seligson in 1893. Since its inception the Museum has specialised in avant garde art.
The Museum of History of the City of Lodz opened in the former residence of the lodz-based manufacturer Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznanski in 1975. Poznanski and his sons built their palace at the turn of the twentieth century, when textile industry flourished, huge fortunes were amassed overnight and spectacular residences were built to testify to their owners' status and wealth.
The Malbork Castle is the largest brick building in Europe, boasting unique Gothic architecture and exemplary restoration work. Construction of its oldest part began in the late 13th century and produced the four-winged Tall Castle.
The museum, which opened in 1961, occupies two rooms in the Malachowski palace, which was built in the years 1751-1773, and designed by Ferdynand Nax. In 1878, the palace was rebuilt as a sanatorium.
Stefan Zeromski (1864-1926) was one Poland's foremost writers, shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1926. In 1905 Zeromski had a wooden cottage built for him in Naleczow where he could work and relax. The writer was fascinated by the art and culture of the Polish highlanders and therefore the cottage was designed by Jan Koszyc-Witkiewicz in the Zakopane style.
The palace in Nieborow was built during the years 1690-1696 by one of the great Baroque architects, the Dutchman Tylman van Gameren. Helena and Michal Radziwill are responsible for the castle's current classical appearance, the result of reconstruction work done in the late eighteenth century. Elements of the castle were last reconstructed during the years 1921-1930 by Janusz Radziwill, and since then the residence has remained virtually unchanged, and preserves the original interiors of its eighteenth and nineteenth century rooms. The palace belonged to the Radziwill family until 1945; after the war, a museum was opened in it, and the castle was opened for use during special state occasions. A lovely park with Baroque gardens surrounds the castle.
This fortified castle, picturesquely located high above the Dunajec River, was built in the first half of the fourteenth century by a member of the Berzevics family of Hungary, which at that time controlled these lands. The fortress was reconstructed in the fifteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth centuries by successive Hungarian lords of Niedzica.
The prewar museum that used to be housed in the Staroscianski castle in Nowy Sacz was completely destroyed in 1945, and had to be reorganised from scratch after the Second World War.
Since the death of the painter Maria Ritter (1899-1976), the Ritter family has opened to the public two rooms in the building that once belonged to the family, which dates back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The synagogue dates back to 1746 and was restored during the years 1971-1982 to repair damage sustained during the Second World War. Division of the District Museum in Nowy Sacz.
There are both poor village cottages and the country estates of the rich, which include houses as well as agricultural and crafts-related buildings. The interiors of the cottages and country estates contain furniture and equipment used in the home, as well as tools used in the various crafts.
The Museum honours Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916), the writer and essayist noted particularly for his historical novels written to "bolster Poles' spirits" during the partitions. His best-known works are the trilogy "With Fire and Sword", "The Deluge" and "Pan Wolodyjowski", "The Black Crusaders", and "Quo Vadi"s, set in Nero's Rome, for which Sienkiewicz received the Nobel Prize in 1905.
The Museum of Warmia and Mazury (Masuria) is housed in a castle built from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, to which was added a Baroque wing in the eighteenth century. When the Masurian Museum opened in 1945, it assumed possession of whatever objects had been preserved from the collections in former East Prussia and from Olsztyn's Heimatmuseum. In 1975, the museum received its present name.
The Museum's holdings include fifty-eight upright and grand pianos manufactured in the years 1820-1939 by Polish piano manufacturers from Kalisz, Warsaw, Radom, Lodz, Krakow and Krolewiec (Königsberg, Kaliningrad); a collection of machine-made lace and embroidery representative of twentieth century styles and fashions; nineteenth and early twentieth century knitting machines, contemporary knitted fabrics, a collection of knurling wheels, headpieces and tailpieces used by printers, nineteenth and twentieth century ceramics.
The Museum of Romanticism opened in 1961 in a small Neo-Gothic castle from the early nineteenth century, which had once belonged to the Krasinski family.
The buildings of the Opolien Silesia Museum include a late seventeenth-century Baroque building edifice that had belonged to the Jesuit college, a classical house built in 1817-1818 and a "provincial inn" from the early nineteenth century. The latter, at 10, Ozimska Street was incorporated into the Museum in 1999 as the Museum Gallery. The Museum itself opened in 1932. Initially a regional institution, it was granted the status of a district museum in 1958.
The Museum of Kurpie Culture is housed in a burgher house constructed from 1823 to 1825 and known as the Old Post Office. When opened in 1975, the museum strove to continue in the footsteps of Adam Chetnik, the distinguished champion of the Kurpie region, who had founded the Primeval Forest Museum in Ostroleka in the 1930s.
The museum was founded on the site of the former concentration camp Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau as provided for by Polish legislation in 1945. In 1995, the site of the Oswiecim-Brzezinka State Museum was officially entered in the Bielsk Voivodship Registry of Monuments.
The museum is housed in a late Baroque manor house built of larch, with four alcoves, constructed during the years 1752-1757 for the family of a moderately well-to-do nobleman by the name of Wladyslaw Bartochowski, Count/h. of Rola, the castellan of Wielun, and Master of the Royal Hunt in Sieradz; it was restored during the years 1970-1980.
A cultural centre of East Pomerania, the Pelplin Diocesan Museum was founded by Bishop Stanislaw Wojciech Okoniewski in 1928. The collections, initially gathered at the bishop's residence and the diocesan Curia, were moved in 1988 to a modern annex to the Curia especially built for that purpose.
Pieskowa Skala Castle was first mentioned in 1315 as a stone castle funded by King Kazimierz the Great. Expanded in the fifteenth century, it was turned into a stately Renaissance residence in the following century and fortified with new Italian style ramparts in the early seventeenth century. It has been a museum since 1966.
The Museum of Mazovia (Muzeum Mazowieckie) is housed in the restored Castle of the Mazovian Princes, which is today a seventeenth to nineteenth century structure having eleventh century foundations and fourteenth century towers. The Museum was originally founded as the Public and School Museum of the Plock Voivodship on the initiative of members of the Plock Academic Society in 1821, it survived for approximately fifteen years, until 1836.
The museum is situated in a Renaissance palace, the city residence of Gorki family dating from the first half of the 16th century, with a preserved early Renaissance portal and a courtyard with a colonnaded cloister.
The museum is housed in the Royal castle, which was originally constructed for King Przemyslaw II; the Baroque north-east wing, the "Raczynski wing", was built on top of the medieval walls for the last Wielkopolski General Starosta, Kazimierz Raczynski by Antoni Hoehne in 1783.
The museum is housed in the old town hall, a Gothic building constructed in the late thirteenth century, reconstructed in the sixteenth century in the Renaissance style by an Italian architect known by his Polonised name, Jan Baptysta Quadro z Lugano; it was founded in 1954 as the heir to the City Museum, which had opened in 1930.
The Museum of Musical Instruments is located on Poznan's Stary Rynek (Old Square), in three fifteenth-century buildings, which were reconstructed during the years 1948-1955. The Museum, which was at that time a division of the Wielkopolskie Museum, inaugurated its activity in 1949 with a major exhibition of musical instruments and another of items related to the life and work of Chopin in commemoration of the centenary of the composer's death.
The museum is housed in a neo-Renaissance building dating back to 1900-1904 and designed by Karol Hinckeldeyn as a museum, and also in a new building constructed in 1976-2001 by a team of architects led by Marian Trzaska.
Situated in the Mazurian Lakeland, on the Nidzkie Lake, the Pranie forester's lodge was the favourite place of work and relaxation of Konstanty Ildefons Galczynski (1905-1953), one of Poland's most celebrated and popular modern poets. Indeed, a number of his poems were turned into songs, with music written by leading composers, and they are still sung nowadays.
In 1909, historians and patriotic circles from Przemysl resolved to set up the Friends of Arts and Sciences Society, which would include a museum. The museum's holdings originated from privately-owned archaeological, ethnographic and art collections, as well as from historical mementoes and archival items which had belonged to the brothers Kazimierz and Tadeusz Osinski.
The Przeworsk Museum is housed in the former seat of the Lubomirski family, a property which dates back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A 12 hectare (29.5 acre) park surrounds a number of historical buildings, the most significant of which is the early nineteenth century classical palace - a seventeenth century manor house expanded by Princess Izabela Lubomirska of the Czartoryski family.
The Museum of Modern Art is housed in two seventeenth-century Baroque houses, Dom Esterki and Dom Gaski (the houses of the Esterka and Gaska families). Formed in 1990 as a division of what was then the Regional Museum, it took over a collection of post-war art and the other holdings of Radom's Art Exhibition Agency, a state institution that was being closed. From 1992 to 2001, the Museum acquired more than 1300 works, mainly through gifts from artists.
The Museum is housed in a group of buildings of the former Piarist monastery. Predominantly Baroque with some classicist elements, the buildings were designed by Antonio Solari, constructed in the years 1737-56, and restored in 1981-95.
Opened in 1949, the Rogalin Museum is comprised of a Baroque and Classical palace from the second half of the eighteenth century, redesigned by D. Merlini and J. C. Kamsetzer, and a pavilion built in the years 1909-1910. The buildings are surrounded by a Baroque garden in the French style from the second half of the eighteenth century, and an English garden from the early nineteenth century with its famous clump of ancient oaks.
The Rzeszow Regional Museum is housed in the former Piarist (Pietist) monastery, built in the years 1642-1645 by Jan Gargerleg and redesigned by Tylman van Gameren in the Baroque style in the early eighteenth century. Originally a School Museum, turned into the Regional Museum of the Rzeszow Area in 1935.
The museum is housed in a late Gothic building known as the "Dlugosz House", built during the years 1476-1478, reconstructed in the seventeenth century. The museum was founded thanks to the efforts of the professors of the local Theological Seminary, and Fr Jozef Rokoszy, helped give the museum its final shape. In 1905, it was originally created as a teaching resource for the art history courses offered at the seminary. In 1937, it opened in its present building.
The Museum is housed in what remains of the Opalinski Castle, originally a fourteenth century wooden fort guarding the crossing over the Warta River. Completely rebuilt by Piotr Opalinski in the sixteenth century, the castle was destroyed two centuries later and was reconstructed in the years 1991-1995.
The Maritime Museum is housed in an eclectic building designed by Wilhelm Meyer Schwartau specifically for exhibition purposes, built between 1908 and 1913. The present-day Maritime Museum was established by the Minister of Seafaring in 1946, incorporated four years later into what was known at that time as the West-Pomeranian Museum, and included as part of the National Museum.
The Museum of the City of Szczecin, housed in the Old Town Hall, opened in 1975 as a division of the Szczecin National Museum in commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of Szczecin's liberation. This Gothic and Baroque building, designed by Heinrich Brunsberg, dates from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
The Museum is housed in a Baroque palace designed by Gerard Cornelius von Walrawe, and was built during the years 1726-1727. Opened in 1945 as the City Museum, it was renamed the Museum of West Pomerania in 1949; in 1970, it was elevated to the rank of a national museum.
The Museum has built on the traditions of the Warsaw Museum of Industry, Agriculture and Farming (1875-1939), which made valuable contributions to Polish science, economy and culture, and which was the first institution of its kind in Poland. The Szreniawa Museum opened in 1964 and since 1966 has been a member of the International Association of Agricultural Museums (AIMA) reporting to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which is affiliated with UNESCO.
The museum's holdings were based on two collections from different museums that had been founded in Torun in the second half of the nineteenth century: Städtlisches Museum, founded in 1861 and housed in the Town Hall (Ratusz), and the Polish Museum of the Torun Academic Association, which was established in 1876. These two museums were united in 1930 as one museum housed in the Town Hall, known as the City Museum It was reopened after the war in 1946, and in 1950, it was renamed the Marine Museum. In 1965, it gained the status of district museum.
The Museum of the Family Home of Pope John Paul II is housed in a building dating back to 1870, which at one time had belonged to Chaim Balamut. The Wojtyla family lived there from 1919 to 1938, with two rooms and a kitchen at their disposal. The Museum opened in 1984, on the Pope's 64th birthday, at the initiative of Archbishop Franciszek Macharski and Mitred Prelate Edward Zacher, who had been for many years Karol Wojtyla's catechist.
In 1936, the Museum of Old Warsaw was formed as a section of the National Museum in Warsaw. During the Second World War, the museum was destroyed. It was reopened in 1948 as the Historical Museum of the Capital City of Warsaw. In 1955, the first permanent exhibition opened.
The Museum is housed in the building of the Main Judaistic Library and the Judaistic Science Institute, designed in the eclectic style by Edward Eber and built in 1928-36. Opened in 1947, the Museum is part of the Jewish Historical Institute evolved in 1947 from the Central Jewish Historical Commission operating within the framework of the Central Committe of Jews in Poland.
The museum is housed in a historic seat of King Stanislaw August - a Palace-Garden complex that was created from 1775 to the late nineteenth century, and has an area of approximately 76 hectares (188 acres), which includes: a park, divided into a farm and approx.
The offices of the Museum of Asia and the Pacific are located in the administrative and residential buildings of a former slaughter house, constructed in 1854 in the late classicist style. Today, the two buildings are surrounded by an "Oriental Oasis", made up of a garden and small-scale wooden Asian architecture. Because of a lack of space, the Museum has no permanent exhibition. Temporary exhibits are displayed at the Museum's three galleries: the Asiatic, Nusantara and the Oriental Art Galleries.
Established in 1983, the Museum is housed in the classicist buildings of the so-called Cantonists' Barracks, also known as the Cripples' Barracks or the Gardener's House, built in 1826-8, and in the so-called Kubicki's Stable, also known as the Horseshoe, built in 1825-6.
The Museum is housed in two buildings situated in the former "Upper" palace and garden compound designed by Szymon Bogumil Zug: the nineteenth-century classicist Frascati palace designed by Leonardo Marconi ,and the Pniewski's Villa, built in 1781 according to the design by Zug and redone in the eclectic style by Bohdan Pniewski in 1935-8.
The National Archeological Museum is housed in the former Royal Arsenal, an early Baroque building dating from 1638-43, expanded in the 19th century, redesigned in the Classicist style in 1816-20 and reconstructed after 1945.
The Museum is housed in six Old Town houses, all being post-war reconstructions. They include the fifteenth-century Balcerowska House, rebuilt in the Baroque style with Gothic elements; the fifteenth-century Orlemusowska House, rebuilt in the seventeenth-century Baroque style; and four smaller houses on the side of Brzozowa Street, purpose-built for the Museum in 1962.
The Museum, established in 1967, has its premises in a restored classicist house, the birthplace of Maria Sklodowska (1867-1934), the physicist and chemist, co-founder of the radiation science and author of pioneering works in nuclear physics and chemistry
The National Ethnographical Museum of Warsaw is housed in the pre-war premises of the Landlords' Credit Society, built by architect Jozef Gorecki in 1853. Its neo-Renaissance elevation was designed by Henryk Marconi and executed in 1856-8 using Venice's New Procuratoria as a model.
Housed in a purpose-built modernistic edifice designed by Tadeusz Tolwinski and constructed in 1927-38, the National Museum of Warsaw traces back its origins to 1862, when the Law on Public Education in the Polish Kingdom established a Fine Arts Museum in Warsaw. Transformed into a National Museum in 1916, it was officially opened in the current premises in 1938, only to be closed to the public by the occupation's authorities just a year later, following the severe damage sustained during the bombardments of 1939.
The Polish Military Museum was established on the basis of a 1920 decree by the Supreme Commander, Marshall Jozef Pilsudski. Initially housed together with the National Museum in a building in Podwale Street, in 1934 it moved to a section of the National Museum's new building, a purpose-built edifice constructed in 1926-38 after the design by Tadeusz Tolwinski. Reopened after World War II in 1946, the Museum started its new divisions, the Museum of Katyn and the Museum of Polish Military Technology, in the 9th Czerniakowski Fort in 1993.
Originally a medieval residence of the Mazovian Princes, the Royal Castle in Warsaw had a number of occupants across the ages: the Polish kings from 1526 to 1795, the Sejm (the lower chamber of Parliament) until 1569, again the monarchs and the Sejm at the time of the Dukedom of Warsaw and the Congress Kingdom, followed by the management of the National Holdings of Art from 1922 and the President of the Polish Republic from 1926.
The Museum is housed in the classicist Krolikarnia palace. The Museum's holdings original holdings were Xawery Dunikowski's gift to the Polish nation. The Museum is proud to have Dunikowski's many sculptures, paintings, drawings and memorabilia. Other holdings include a collection of old and new sculpture from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century and a collection of modern sculpture.
The Museum, whose aim is to document the cultural development of Kashuby and Pomerania over the ages, collects Kashubian and Pomeranian literature and music.
Wenecja, a village first mentioned in 1894, is situated along the Paluck section of the Piast route, between Znin and Biskupin, amidst the picturesque Weneckie, Skrzynka and Biskupiskie Lakes. More than a hundred years ago, in 1894, the opening of the Znin County Railway facilitated the local transport of people, mail and goods. It had a gauge of 600 mm, the narrowest in Poland. The railway was gradually expanded to link Znin with a number of other towns and villages. In 1962, the Polish National Railways decided to close down this rail link to passenger traffic.
The Kujawski and Dobrzynski District Museum was established as the Kujawskie Museum by the Kujawski Division of the Association of the Lovers of the Polish Countryside in 1909, reopened after World War II in 1946, and housed the first exhibition of the Kujawy folk art in 1949.
The Archaeological Museum is housed in Wroclaw's Mikolajski Arsenal. Constructed from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in the Gothic and Renaissance styles, it is one of Wroclaw's most interesting historic municipal buildings. The museum was first established as the Royal Museum of Art and Antiquity and is one of the oldest museums of its kind in Europe.
The Historical Museum is located in the Old Royal Palace on Kazimierza Wielkiego Street. The museum's holdings, which tell the town's history from the Middle Ages to the present, are divided into several sections.
The Museum of Architecture opened in 1965 in a Late Gothic Bernardine church and monastery dating back to the second half of the fifteenth century. Originally a branch of the Museum of the City of Wroclaw, when it was known as the Museum of Architecture and Reconstruction, it was later to become an independent, specialised institution called the Museum of Architecture. Since 1989, it has been included among the "special status" museums.
The holdings comprise mostly works by artists associated with Wroclaw, and include painting, sculpture and graphics, as well as crafts and decorative objects made of gold, silver and pewter in the late Gothic, Baroque, eclectic and Art Nouveau styles.
The Jewish cemetery was founded in 1856, and served as the burial ground for the Jewish community until 1942. In 1988, it was opened to visitors as the Museum of Sepulchral Art. In 1991, it was made a branch of the Historical Museum, and since 2000 has been a division of the Wroclaw Municipal Museum.
The Wroclaw National Museum is housed in a building designed by K. F. Endell in the Dutch Neo-Renaissance style and constructed in 1883-6, the seat of the Silesian Regency until 1939.
The rotunda housing the "Panorama Raclawicka" is one of the few places in the world where visitors can see a relic of the 19th century mass culture - a huge, 120m x 15m painting in the shape of a revolving hyperboloid (spool) commemorating the battle of Raclawice. Fought on 4th April 1974, the battle was an overwhelming victory over the Russian army by the Insurrection troops commanded by Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
The City Council resolved to establish the Wroclaw City Museum in January 2000, which would have the following divisions: Archaeological Museum, Historical Museum, Museum of Medal-Making, Military Museum, Museum of Burgher Art and Museum of Sepulchral Art.
The Karol Szymanowski Museum is housed in the Atma Villa, a pre-1910 wooden building in the Zakopane style, in which Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) composer, pianist and author of musical and literary studies lived and worked from 1930 to 1936. Plans for the museum, opened in 1967, were announced on the thirtieth anniversary of the composer's death.
The Dr Tytus Chalubinski Tatra Mountains Museum is housed in a purpose-built building designed by Stanislaw Witkiewicz and Franciszek Maczynski in the Zakopane style and constructed in 1913-22.
The Stanislaw Witkiewicz Museum of the Zakopane Style is housed in the Koliba summer house, designed by Stanislaw Witkiewicz and built in 1892-1894, the first building in the Zakopane style.
The Zakopane Gallery boasts representative examples of Hasior's work in various genres: spatial compositions; sculptures made from a variety of materials; pieces of everyday rubbish that acquire new meanings in the artist's works, and, accompanied as they are with metaphorical jokes and paradoxical titles, inspire viewers to reflect on the contemporary world and art.
The Zamosc Museum is housed in a group of the so-called Armenian Houses at the town's Grand Marketplace. Constructed in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the styles of Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque, these buildings are a constituent part of the original urban and architectural design of the "gem of the Polish Renaissance" or the "Padua of the North", as Zamosc is referred to. Indeed, the town, built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had been planned in accordance with the Italian ideal town planning principles, and as such has been entered on the UNESCO's world heritage list.
The Museum of the Lubuski Region, housed in an eclectic public building from 1890, is one of the oldest and largest museums in the Central Odra River area.
The Museum has objects related to literature from the Positivist, Romantic and Young Poland periods, as well as works of art, historical and ethnographic holdings, furniture and accessories.
The Museum is housed in a late nineteenth century manor, the birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin, Poland's greatest composer and pianist who lived in the years 1810-49. It was here that Chopin spent his early childhood together with his French father, Nicolas Chopin, the private teacher and trainer of Countess's Skarbek children, and his mother, Tekla Justyna Krzyzanowska, a poor relative of the Countess.
"Wciąż masz chamie złoty róg? Wciąż masz chamie czapkę z piór" - works from the exhibition by Wiesław Rosocha
June 5 - June 20, 2009
"Wciąż masz chamie złoty róg? Wciąż masz chamie czapkę z piór" - preview of the exhibition by Wiesław Rosocha
June 4, 2009
Museum of Modern Art in New York will host a screening of Bartek Konopka's Oscar nominated documentary "Rabbit à la Berlin" on February 28.
On February 22, a play by Dorota Masłowska "Miedzy nami dobrze jest" will premiere at Teater Galeasen in Stockholm.
The European Fairy Tale Centre in Pacanów (Świętokrzyskie region) will open on February 24, 2010.
Art from the collection of Kraków's Czartoryski Museum will be on display in the Castle in Niepołomice, starting in spring 2010. This is due to renovation work in the Czartoryski Museum scheduled to end in 2012. Niepołomice Castle will host around 1700 works of art, including paintings by Paolo Veneziano, Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Lorenzo Lotto.
On February 12, "The Ghost Writer", the newest film by Roman Polański, will officialy screen at the Berlinale Film Festival. A week later, on February 19, the film will premiere in theaters in Poland, Switzerland, and in the U.S.
On February 10, 2010 in Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Krystian Zimerman will give a Chopin piano recital marking the Chopin Year celebrations in Italy.
The 46th Wrocław Jazz Festival "Jazz nad Odrą" will start on February 28. The festival will last until March 6, 2010. For more info see www.jnofestival.pl.
The 7th edition of "Misteria Paschalia" in Kraków will take place on March 29 - April 5, 2010.
In honor of the Chopin Anniversary Year, 1st Chopin International Piano Competition in Hartford, Connecticut, will be held from February 20-21, 2010.
Tchaikovski Gala with Grzegorz Nowak as conductor - London, Cadogan Hall, February 18, 2010.
Krystian Zimerman at Chopin Birthday Concert 1 - London, Royal Festival Hall - Southbank Centre, February 22, 2010.
The 8th Kinoteka Polish Film Festiwal in London opens on March 4 and will last untill April 12, 2010.
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