Thesaurus Cracoviensis

What to expect

Thesaurus Cracoviensis is the Museum of Krakow’s open storage facility: a working collection store and conservation centre in the Bielany neighbourhood that you can actually walk through. This is not an exhibition in the usual sense. What you see is the museum’s back of house - the paintings, prints, coins and medals, weapons, furniture, decorative art and Krakow nativity scenes (szopki) that do not fit on the permanent displays in the city-centre branches. The objects sit in purpose-built storage furniture with large glass fronts, and the individual stores carry playful names: the print store is the Old Library, the textile stores are the Draper’s Warehouse and Grandma’s Wardrobe, the weapons store is the Arsenal, the coin store the Treasury. The route also passes a glazed corridor overlooking the conservation workshops, and a multimedia room lets you browse the digitised part of the collection. The museum notes that only a handful of institutions worldwide have opened their stores this way, citing examples in Denver, Washington, Antwerp and Vienna.

Should you come? If you have already seen the main branches and are curious how a museum actually works, this is a genuinely unusual visit. If this is your first day in Krakow, the city-centre museums are a better use of your time - the location is far out and the schedule is tight.

Visiting in practice

Plan carefully: for individual visitors the branch is open only on Saturdays, 10:00-16:00, and only with a guided tour, which is included in the ticket price. Tours start at 10:00, 11:15, 13:00 and 14:15, the last one being the final admission, so in practice you are choosing one of four entry slots per week. A standard ticket costs 28 PLN, reduced 24 PLN, and unlike most Museum of Krakow branches there is no free-admission day here. Tickets are sold on the museum website and at the venue subject to availability - with so few slots, booking ahead online is the safe option. Fridays are reserved for educational sessions for groups, and group bookings go through info@muzeumkrakowa.pl . The branch also runs a “Clinic for Things” series of Saturday meetings with conservators, where you can bring family heirlooms and ask how to care for them. Announced closures: 1 and 11 November, and 24, 25, 26 and 31 December.

Getting there

The centre stands at ul. Księcia Józefa 337 in Bielany, at the western edge of the Zwierzyniec district near Las Wolski - roughly a half-hour journey from the Old Town. Take a bus to the Bielany Szkoła stop: line 102 from Krowodrza Górka, line 109 from Cichy Kącik, or suburban lines 209, 219, 229, 239 and 269 from Rondo Grunwaldzkie. By car, follow ul. Księcia Józefa along the Vistula towards Tyniec.

Nearby

There are no other museums within walking distance, so pair this trip with the branches whose collections feed these stores: Krzysztofory Palace on the Main Market Square tells the history of the city, the Wyspiański Museum shows Krakow’s great Art Nouveau polymath, and the Matejko House on Floriańska street preserves the painter’s studio - many of his and his contemporaries’ works pass through the very workshops you will have just seen.