Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Krakow

What to expect

Do not plan a visit. The museum is temporarily closed and no reopening date has been announced. Its last show, “Student Andrzej Wajda”, ended on 30 June 2026, and the academy is moving out of its main building on plac Matejki for a long energy-efficiency refit. In the academy’s own words: “W związku z przeniesieniem siedziby głównej Akademii na ulicę Bernardyńską 3, Muzeum jest tymczasowo nieczynne” - the museum is closed because the academy’s headquarters have moved to Bernardyńska 3. Where the exhibition room will reopen has not been said.

What is waiting out the closure is a collection with better names than its profile suggests. The academy counts close to 6,000 inventory entries across painting, drawing, artistic textiles, sculpture and design. The roll call runs from Jan Matejko, Jacek Malczewski, Stanisław Wyspiański and Xawery Dunikowski to Tadeusz Kantor, Jerzy Nowosielski, Andrzej Wróblewski and the film director Andrzej Wajda. Almost all of it arrived as gifts from the artists themselves, which is why the holdings read like a family album of Polish art rather than a shopping list.

Set your expectations before you plan a return trip. The museum had one small temporary-exhibition room on the first floor. The paintings worth crossing town for hang in working spaces instead: the Senate Hall, the rector’s office with its series of rector portraits begun in the 1930s, and corridors lined with 19th-century plaster casts. A walk-in visitor never sees those rooms, and the museum’s own page does not warn you about it.

Who this is genuinely for: art historians, academy graduates and applicants, and anyone tracking one specific Polish artist. If you are in Krakow for three days, skip it even after it reopens - thirty minutes in a single room cannot compete with what stands within a kilometre of it.

Tips

• Check before you travel - the reopening will be posted on the museum’s page and its Facebook profile first. The current promise is “soon”, with no date attached.
• Entry was and stays free - the museum has never sold tickets, taken bookings or required registration. Expect the same when it returns.
• Allow 30 minutes - one temporary-exhibition room, no permanent display, no cafe, no shop. It is a stop, not an afternoon.
• Do not go to Bernardyńska 3 - that address is the museum office on the second floor, not a gallery. The phone +48 12 299 20 29 and muzeum@asp.krakow.pl still work.
• Labels and staff - the museum publishes nothing about English labelling, and its past shows were captioned in Polish. Assume you will need a translation app.
• If you came for Wajda - the student-work show has closed, but 2026 is the official Andrzej Wajda Year in Poland, and the large “Wajda” exhibition is at the National Museum main building .
• The tip almost nobody knows - the museum also owns Olga Boznańska’s house and studio at ul. Piłsudskiego 21, left to the academy in the painter’s will. Guided tours under the “Domówka u Boznańskiej” programme are free; workshops cost and need booking through the academy’s careers office.
• Look at the building anyway - the plac Matejki facade is worth two minutes: Jan Tombiński’s bust of Matejko over the entrance and griffins on the domed corner turrets.

Getting there

On foot: from the Main Square walk through St Florian’s Gate and up Floriańska Street, about ten minutes to plac Jana Matejki. The building stands on the east side of the square, facing the Grunwald Monument.

Tram: the Basztowa LOT and Dworzec Główny stops are a few hundred metres away, on the ring road that circles the Old Town, and most city lines pass through one of them.

From the airport or a train: Krakow Główny station is five minutes on foot through the Galeria Krakowska passage - this is the closest museum in the city to the platforms.

The Bernardyńska office: if you really need it, get off at the Wawel or Stradom tram stop and walk a few minutes along the foot of Wawel hill.

By car: plac Matejki sits in the paid parking zone beside the busiest traffic junction in central Krakow. Use the station car park or leave the car at your hotel.

Nearby

If what drew you here was the idea of a university’s own art collection, go to Collegium Maius instead. The Jagiellonian University’s oldest building shows its holdings properly, on a guided route. Five minutes from plac Matejki is Matejko House , the preserved studio of the painter the academy is named after, which pairs naturally with a look at the facade. Continuing toward the Main Square you reach the Czartoryski Museum and Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine - the only one of the three worth rearranging a day for.

Background

The academy was founded in 1818 inside the Jagiellonian University and is the oldest art school in Poland. The museum is much younger: rector prof. Jan Pamuła created it as a university-wide unit in 2003, so that somebody would finally inventory and publish what the school had been accumulating for nearly two centuries.

The building on plac Matejki was designed by Maciej Moraczewski, then the city’s director of construction, and built in 1879-1880. Brick elevations with pale window surrounds, two corner turrets under domes guarded by griffins, and Jan Tombiński’s 1894 bust of Matejko above the door. The refit now emptying it is a thermal-modernisation project worth close to 77 million PLN, with European funding. The painting and sculpture faculties and the administration are out for three years. The academy plans to return for the 2029/2030 academic year.