Czapski Museum (National Museum in Krakow)

What to expect

The Czapski Museum is the National Museum in Krakow’s numismatic branch, and one of the city’s quietest and most rewarding small museums. It grew out of a single obsession: Emeryk Hutten-Czapski (1828-1896), regarded as the greatest Polish coin collector who ever lived, assembled the most valuable collection of Polish coins, medals and banknotes ever created, alongside rare old prints and maps. He installed it in a small neoclassical palace built for him in 1884 to a design by Antoni Siedek; after his death his widow and sons donated the palace and its contents to the National Museum in 1903. The collection has kept growing ever since and now exceeds 100,000 objects, of which 2,500 of the most valuable - including unique, near-legendary coins - are shown in the permanent exhibition.

Should you come if coins are not your thing? Quite possibly yes, because the second half of the complex is about a person, not objects. The Jozef Czapski Pavilion is devoted to the collector’s grandson, Jozef Czapski (1896-1993), a painter, writer and one of the great Polish intellectuals of the twentieth century; it holds his archives, diaries, library and personal effects, a permanent biographical exhibition staged to a scenario by Krystyna Zachwatowicz, and the permanent display “Memento vitae” of his paintings from the museum’s collection. Between the buildings lies a garden with century-old trees and a lapidarium whose star piece is a 14th-century pinnacle from St Mary’s Church - with granite paths, benches and tables, it doubles as one of the nicest places to sit down near the Old Town.

Visiting in practice

The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays. Tuesday is the long day, 10:00 to 18:00, while Wednesday to Sunday it closes at 16:00 - plan accordingly, as a late-afternoon visit only works on a Tuesday. Tuesday is also the free-admission day for the permanent exhibitions, which makes it clearly the best value day, at the cost of more company. On other days a standard ticket is 18 PLN, reduced 14 PLN, a family ticket 36 PLN, and pupils and students pay a symbolic 1 PLN. According to the museum’s price list, a permanent-exhibition ticket here is also honoured at the permanent exhibitions of several other smaller branches of the National Museum, including the Szolayski House and the Arsenal ancient art gallery , so it stretches naturally into a one-day MNK circuit. Allow about an hour for the coin cabinet and the pavilion together.

Accessibility is good by Old Town standards: the palace entrance has high steps but staff provide portable ramps, and inside there are a lift, wide passages and adapted toilets; the Jozef Czapski Pavilion is fully accessible, with a lift, a self-service cloakroom, an accessible toilet and a cafe with a terrace. The only part out of reach for wheelchair users is the old prints library on the palace mezzanine. The cafe and the garden are open to visitors and make an easy break between this branch and the next one.

Getting there

The museum stands at ul. Piłsudskiego 12, just west of the Planty park ring and a few steps from the Jagiellonian University’s Collegium Novum. From the Main Market Square it is a walk of about ten minutes; the nearest tram stops are on the Podwale and Straszewskiego streets on the western edge of the Planty, served by the lines circling the Old Town.

Nearby

A few minutes further towards the Błonia meadow is the National Museum Main Building , with its galleries of 20th-century Polish art and design. Back across the Planty, by plac Szczepański, the Szolayski House shows another face of the same museum, and a quarter of an hour across the Old Town brings you to the Czartoryski Museum and Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine - together an unhurried full day of collectors’ Krakow.