Museum of Anatomy

What to expect

Settle the access question first, because it decides everything else. Since 1 February 2026 the Museum of Anatomy admits organised groups only, and only after a date has been agreed by phone with a member of the department staff. A solo traveller cannot walk in during opening hours. If you are travelling alone or as a couple, this page is planning material for a future group visit, not for tomorrow afternoon.

What is behind the door is a teaching collection, not an exhibition designed for visitors. Three rooms on the first floor of the Jagiellonian University Medical College anatomy building hold the specimens. The first is bones, joints, comparative anatomy and physical anthropology. The second holds the wet preparations in jars of formaldehyde and methyl salicylate: organs, cross-sections, fetuses with developmental abnormalities. Beside them stand corrosion casts, made by pushing resin through the blood vessels and dissolving the tissue away, and wax teaching models from the interwar years. The third room carries Professor Ludwik Teichmann’s name and holds the oldest specimens, several of which he prepared himself.

The department’s own site puts the collection at over 2000 specimens; a 2001 inventory counted 2077. Every exhibit is labelled, but nobody guides you around. Groups get a short introductory talk on the history of the collection and on how the specimens were made, and that is the whole of the interpretation on offer.

Best for biology and medicine students, paramedics, and adults who can assemble their own group and bring some anatomical grounding. The minimum age is 16 and it is enforced. Two honest warnings. These are prepared human bodies, and some of them are hard to look at. The labelling language is stated nowhere, so ask when you book whether the talk can be given in English. If either point rules the visit out, the Pharmacy Museum 700 m away is the sister Medical College collection with no age limit and no booking.

Tips

• Book by phone, not email. Dates are set by a department staff member on +48 691 500 900, Monday to Friday between 8:00 and 15:00. The email address anatomia@cm-uj.krakow.pl works as a backup, and it is the better option from abroad, but the phone line is the channel the museum names.
• You do not pick your slot. The museum operates within 8:30-14:00 (last entry), Monday to Friday; the exact hour is fixed during the booking call, not chosen from a timetable.
• Ask about English when you book. Nothing on the official site promises English labels or an English-speaking talk. Raise it on the call so your group is not standing in front of Polish captions for an hour.
• Allow 75 minutes. The viewing itself takes about an hour, plus the introductory talk and buying tickets at the department secretariat - there is no ticket desk at the entrance. Tickets are 14 PLN standard and 8 PLN reduced for pupils and students, cash or card.
• The Krakow Tourist Card is worthless here. The museum states plainly that it does not accept it for concessions.
• No photography, but there is an official gallery. Filming and photographing the exhibits is banned under university rules. The department publishes its own virtual gallery of all 37 display cases at katedra-anatomii.cm-uj.krakow.pl/panorama2, which is the only way to take images of the collection home.
• Save time for room three. The Teichmann room is the oldest and the most carefully kept part of the collection, and groups that rush the first two rooms get the most out of it.
• Check the university calendar before you call. The museum was shut for the whole of summer 2026, from 22 June to 31 August, and 31 December 2026 is a Medical College day off.

Getting there

On foot: about 12 minutes from the Main Square - down Sienna Street, across the Planty park and east along Kopernika Street. From Kraków Główny railway station it is closer, roughly 620 m or under ten minutes, which makes it easy to fit around an arrival or departure.

Tram: the nearest stops are Teatr Słowackiego (about 270 m), Poczta Główna (about 340 m) and Hala Targowa (about 390 m). There is no tram stop on Kopernika Street itself, and Rondo Mogilskie, which some listings name, is nearly a kilometre away.

Bus: the same three stops - Teatr Słowackiego, Poczta Główna and Hala Targowa - are served by buses, so the walk from them is identical.

By car: the building stands inside the fenced Medical College grounds in paid parking zone B12. Street parking in this corner of the Old Town is scarce; with a booked slot to keep, the tram is the safer choice.

Wheelchair access: the main entrance from Kopernika Street is at ground level, a ramp platform runs in the corridor and a lift connects the floors, so the first-floor rooms are reachable. Be aware of two-centimetre thresholds in some rooms and of the fact that the building has no accessible toilet. Assistance dogs are allowed.

Nearby

A few minutes away on Floriańska Street, the Pharmacy Museum is the other Medical College museum. It takes individuals without booking and sets no age limit, which makes it the obvious fallback if a group visit here proves impossible. On Jagiellońska Street, two minutes off the Main Square, Collegium Maius holds the university’s historic scientific instruments; paired with the anatomy collection it shows what the Jagiellonian actually taught with over four centuries. A few streets on, the Czartoryski Museum and Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine make a deliberate change of register after an hour among specimens.

Background

The collection began in 1803 with twelve bone and fetal preparations brought from Vienna. It grew fast: 66 specimens by 1809, 227 by 1835, around 1850 by the 1960s. The earliest ones were kept in spirit-filled jars sealed with animal bladder, and Kraków residents were encouraged to donate animals, exotic species in particular.

Its strangest chapter came under German occupation. Between 1942 and 1944 Stanisław Kohmann, a pre-war departmental assistant, taught anatomy at the clandestine Jagiellonian University and smuggled specimens out of the museum for his classes. Discovery would have carried a death sentence.

The museum reopened to the public after renovation in April 2009. The department points readers wanting more to Janina Sokołowska-Pituchowa’s book on four centuries of anatomy in Kraków, published by the Jagiellonian University Press in 2002.