Copts. From Egypt to Podlasie

A photography show by Elżbieta Dziuk inside Lublin’s Trinity Tower pairs two sides of one community. On one side are Coptic monasteries in the Egyptian desert; on the other, a Cairo church choir on tour in Podlasie, a region of north-eastern Poland with a large Orthodox community. It is covered by the tower ticket and runs until the end of October 2026. The museum publishes no English text, so the quotation below is our translation of its Polish description.

Lublin Archdiocese Museum - Trinity Tower on the exhibition:

The exhibition presents photographs taken in Egypt and in Poland. They show the two oldest Coptic monasteries - the Monastery of St Anthony and the Monastery of St Paul, located in the Arabian Desert. The photographs on display also include views of Cairo, among them a Coptic cemetery.

Part of the exhibition is made up of photographs documenting a performance by the Coptic choir “Leyakon Noor” from the Church of St Mark the Apostle in Cairo. The choir performed in spring 2025 in Hajnówka and in Topiło in Podlasie.

What to expect

This is a show of photographs only - no objects, no screens. The museum gives neither the number of prints nor the floor they hang on. The Catholic weekly “Gość Niedzielny”, in reports of 25 May and 5 June 2026 , places them in the tower’s walkway on the visitor route. Our reading: you pass them on your way round rather than in a room of their own.

Three strands to look for:

• The desert monasteries - St Anthony’s and St Paul’s, which the museum calls the two oldest Coptic monasteries.
• Cairo - the city seen through its Coptic community, including a Coptic cemetery.
• The “Leyakon Noor” choir in Podlasie - a record of its spring 2025 concerts in Hajnówka and Topiło. This is the part that explains the second half of the title.

The photographs are not new to exhibition walls. According to the regional news site bielsk.eu, a show about the Copts with Elżbieta Dziuk’s photographs opened in November 2025 at the municipal culture centre in Orla, near Bielsk Podlaski.

Context

The Copts are Egypt’s indigenous Christians, descended from the population that lived there before the Arab conquest. Most belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church, which traces its foundation to St Mark the Evangelist. They speak Arabic day to day, while the liturgy is still celebrated in Coptic, the last stage of the language of ancient Egypt.

St Anthony’s Monastery lies in the Eastern Desert, also called the Arabian Desert, about 334 km south-east of Cairo near the Red Sea; its beginnings are dated to around 300 AD. The Monastery of St Paul the Anchorite stands in the same desert, below the Red Sea mountains.

Podlasie enters the story through the Hajnówka International Festival of Orthodox Church Music (“Hajnowskie Dni Muzyki Cerkiewnej”). Its 44th edition, in May 2025, featured “Leyakon Noor”, founded in 2016 at St Mark’s church in Cairo’s Shubra district. The Topiło concert, in a village inside the Białowieża Forest, was part of the festival’s folk evening on 16 May 2025.

Tickets and time

There is no separate ticket for this exhibition. The museum’s price list covers entry to the tower: 20 PLN standard, 15 PLN reduced, free for children under three. A combined ticket that adds Lublin Archcathedral (the acoustic sacristy, the treasury and the crypts) costs 26 PLN and 18 PLN. Reduced tickets apply to children from three, school pupils, students up to 26, seniors and disabled visitors.

The dates are approximate. The museum gives months only - “May - October 2026” - not an opening or closing day, so we use 1 May and 31 October 2026. The museum publishes opening hours for May to October only, so do not count on November, and do not leave it to the last weekend.

The tower closes over lunch. Until 30 September: Tuesday to Thursday 10:00-13:30 and 14:30-17:30, Friday 13:00-16:30 and 17:30-20:30, Saturday and Sunday 12:00-14:30 and 15:30-19:30. In October: Wednesday to Friday 10:00-13:30 and 14:30-17:30, Saturday 12:00-14:30 and 15:30-19:30, Sunday 11:00-14:30 and 15:30-18:30; the October table lists no Monday or Tuesday hours. A guided tour runs on Saturdays at 15:30; the museum does not say in which language.

The photographs alone take 15-20 minutes, but you are climbing a tower, so allow about 90 minutes for the whole visit with the terrace. The same ticket gets you the season’s other temporary shows, including “Holy Dialogue”, sacred art from the KUL Museum collection.

English on site: the museum’s website has no English version and says nothing about English captions, audio guides or tours. Treat the images as the content and do not count on translated labels.

Who it is for: anyone curious about Eastern Christianity, about Egypt beyond the pyramids, or about Orthodox church music, and anyone climbing the tower for the view anyway. Who can skip it: visitors after a large exhibition of objects; this is photography. The museum publishes no accessibility information, so if you use a wheelchair or cannot manage stairs, call +48 695 475 152 before you go.

What the press says

No English-language coverage was found, and nobody has reviewed the show, as of 23 September 2026. There are three news pieces in Polish, none of them critical:

• Gość Niedzielny Lublin (25 May 2026, Małgorzata Oroń): a report from the tower’s season opening; it places the photographs in the walkway, says they show the daily life of the Coptic Church, and credits them to Elżbieta Dziuk and Krzysztof Renik - link .
• Gość Niedzielny Lublin (5 September 2026, Małgorzata Oroń): an autumn guide to the tower that presents the photographs, credited to “Elżbieta Dziuk-Renik”, as a look at one of the oldest Christian communities and its life outside Egypt - link .
• bielsk.eu (9 November 2025, ed. (ms), GOK Orla): a report on the “Coptic evening” at the culture centre in Orla, where Elżbieta Dziuk’s photographs were shown alongside two films about the Coptic diaspora; Krzysztof Renik organised the show - link .

The museum’s own page credits the photographs to Elżbieta Dziuk alone.

See also

• Trinity Tower - the venue: the archdiocese’s sacred sculpture on successive floors and Lublin’s highest viewpoint.
• Holy Dialogue - another temporary show in the tower this season, on the same ticket, open until 31 October 2026.
• National Museum in Warsaw - if Christianity on the Nile holds you: the Faras Gallery of Nubian Christian wall paintings, rescued by Polish archaeologists.

Opening hours and prices are on the Trinity Tower’s website (Polish only), and the exhibition text is on the museum’s exhibition page .

Museum profile: Lublin Archdiocese Museum - Trinity Tower .