Regional Museum in Kraśnik with the Museum of the 24th Uhlan Regiment

What to expect

The Kraśnik Uhlan Regiment Museum is a one-regiment museum in a small town 49 km south-west of Lublin. It is worth the drive only if the 24th Uhlan Regiment interests you. The building is a two-storey interwar house of 313 square metres at ul. Piłsudskiego 7, rebuilt for over 6 million PLN and reopened on 7 October 2020. Local press at the reopening described touchscreens, films, audio guides and interactive games: one has you assemble a uniform, another has you fight the battle yourself. Expect a modern small museum, not a provincial cabinet of curiosities.

The main display, The 24th Uhlan Regiment: History and Tradition, follows the cavalry unit garrisoned here from April 1922 until September 1939. The thread worth following is what happened next. In September 1939 the regiment fought inside the 10th Cavalry Brigade under Colonel Stanisław Maczek, the only motorised Polish brigade of that campaign. It ended the war in Germany in May 1945 with Maczek’s 1st Armoured Division. Uhlans in name, engines in practice: if you know Maczek’s route through Normandy, Belgium and the Netherlands, this room is where it starts.

The second display, The Battles of Kraśnik 1914-1915, covers 23-25 August 1914, when General Viktor Dankl’s Austro-Hungarian First Army beat the Russian Fourth Army just outside town. It was the first Austro-Hungarian victory of the war and is barely remembered today. A third, Old Kraśnik, is a panel gallery of photographs. Upstairs sit ceramics and archaeological finds from excavations in the county.

Best for readers of military history, for anyone tracing the Polish Armed Forces in the West, and for families with school-age children, since the interactive stations genuinely hold teenagers. The museum publishes nothing about label languages, so assume Polish only and bring a translation app. If you want art or a large collection, stay at Lublin Castle instead.

Tips

• Allow 60 to 90 minutes. The museum publishes no suggested duration; this is our estimate from three displays across under 200 square metres of exhibition space. Playing the interactive games through pushes it closer to two hours.
• Free days are named dates, not a weekday. The branch announces them one month at a time. Check the “Wizyta” page shortly before you travel, because the list changes every month.
• No online tickets for this branch. The National Museum in Lublin sells online for the Castle only. Here you pay at the door: 10 PLN standard, 8 PLN concession, free for children under 7.
• The combined ticket only works Lublin-first. “Zamek Lubelski + Oddziały” covers the Castle plus the branches at 50 PLN standard and 40 PLN concession, but it is sold only at the Castle box office. Arrive in Kraśnik first and you cannot buy it.
• Book a guide before you come. A guided tour is 70 PLN plus admission per person, a museum lesson 80 PLN plus 7 PLN per person, a workshop 100 PLN plus 10 PLN per person, on 81 884 34 85 or krasnik@mnwl.pl . Booking is also the only way to get the living-history session on the 1914 battle, with period uniforms and weapons handled in the room.
• Skip Old Kraśnik unless you know the town. It is photographs on panels with no objects: ten minutes for someone who recognises the streets, far less for a first-time visitor.
• Photography is private use only. No flash, no extra lighting, no tripods, and no right to publish what you shoot.
• Call about step-free access. The Kraśnik branch appears neither in the museum’s accessibility declaration nor in its “Museum without barriers” pages. The 2020 press report mentions a lift to the second floor, but that is a newspaper and not the museum’s own statement, so phone ahead if you use a wheelchair or a pushchair.

Getting there

By bus: the “Piłsudskiego” stop is about 80 metres from the entrance, under a two-minute walk, and is served by MPK Kraśnik lines 1, 6 and 7.

By train: Kraśnik station sits on the Lublin Główny to Stalowa Wola Rozwadów line and even fast trains call there, but it is nearly 5 km east of the museum. Do not plan to walk it; line 7 runs from the station loop past the museum stop.

By coach: the long-distance stops on the Lublin approach are about 700 metres away, roughly ten minutes on foot along ul. Piłsudskiego.

By car: 51 km and about 48 minutes from central Lublin on national road 19. Old Kraśnik has no paid parking zone, and free car parks and kerbside spaces start around 100 metres from the door.

Nearby

Start with the parent institution: the National Museum in Lublin at Lublin Castle sells the combined ticket that also covers this branch, so buy it there if Lublin comes first in your day. Continuing south on road 19, after 40 km you reach the Regional Museum in Janów Lubelski , which covers the neighbouring county and the Janów Forests. In the other direction, on the Vistula, the Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny is a complete change of register: an artists’ town rather than a garrison.

Background

The museum opened in 1976 for the town’s 600th anniversary, in ground-floor rooms of a former monastery. It moved in 1981 to makeshift space by the monastery gate, where damp and fungus in the walls threatened both the collection and the staff, and the county eventually handed over the interwar brick building that houses it now.

The Museum of the 24th Uhlan Regiment, named after Grand Crown Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, opened on 6 July 1995, the regiment’s 75th anniversary. The date matters: on 6 July 1920 Colonel Tadeusz Żółkiewski began raising the volunteer unit that became the 214th and then the 24th Uhlan Regiment. Marshal Józef Piłsudski presented its standard in Warsaw in 1923, and it travelled with the regiment to France and Britain. The site reopened after modernisation on 7 October 2020 and has carried the regiment’s name alone since 2022. The older regional title still circulates online, but there is one address to visit.