Lublin's History Has Many Names

Jolanta Michalak, a Lublin painter who also works as a city guide, has hung portraits of the people who made Lublin at the very top of the Trinity Tower, from King Casimir the Great to the poet Julia Hartwig. The show sits on the route up to the viewing terrace and needs no ticket of its own.

Lublin Archdiocese Museum - Trinity Tower on the exhibition (our translation; the museum publishes this text in Polish only):

The exhibition presents portraits of selected people who not only witnessed Lublin’s history but made it, setting a direction for future generations.

Kings, writers, poets, photographers, social activists, industrialists, religious leaders - through what they did, all of them shaped the course of history, creating a historical portrait of the city.

What to expect

The portraits hang at the top of the tower. The Lublin edition of the Catholic weekly “Gość Niedzielny” places the show on the highest floors, in a space known as the Gallery under the Rooster (Galeria pod Kogutkiem), just below the viewing terrace. You reach it at the end of the 207-step climb, not at the start, so anyone going up for the view will walk through it anyway.

The museum gives no count of works. The photo gallery on its exhibition page shows nine portraits close up, in plain frames on the tower’s timber walls. Each is a face drawn in greys, surrounded by colour motifs that hint at what the person did for the city. The name is lettered into the work itself, so you can tell who is who without hunting for a label.

Who appears in the photographs the museum has published:

• Casimir the Great - crowned, and ringed by city walls, towers and gates.
• Władysław Jagiełło and Sigismund II Augustus - two Jagiellonian kings hung one above the other, each with a coat of arms.
• Bolesław Prus - beside a pile of books whose spines include “Lalka” (The Doll) and “Faraon” (Pharaoh), the novels he is best known for in Poland.
• Julia Hartwig and Edward Hartwig - the poet and her photographer brother, he beside a wooden plate camera on a tripod.
• The Seer of Lublin - a Hasidic sage, drawn in a sharper, more graphic manner than the others.

The photographs also show a portrait of Bishop Marian Leon Fulman and a work lettered “Felicjan Łodzia Bieczyński”. The museum does not publish the full list of sitters.

Context

The Polish title plays on the saying “niejedno ma imię”, roughly “comes in many guises”: Lublin’s history has many faces, and many names. The museum’s page writes the phrase as two words, the poster as one. The sitters span several centuries. Sigismund II Augustus ratified the Union of Lublin in 1569, the treaty agreed at a parliament held in this city that joined the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into one Commonwealth.

Jacob Isaac Horowitz, known as the Seer of Lublin, was one of the leaders of the Hasidic movement. Marian Leon Fulman led the Lublin diocese from 1918 to 1945. Julia Hartwig was born in Lublin in 1921; her elder brother Edward, later one of Poland’s best-known photographers, moved here with the family in 1918 and learned the trade in their father’s studio.

Jolanta Michalak studied painting at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin and did postgraduate studies in museum work and heritage protection at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL); she also guides visitors round the city. In spring 2025 the Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre Centre showed her series “Ptaki nas prowadzą” (The Birds Lead Us) about the vanished Jewish district of Podzamcze. The city’s portal lublin.eu reported that the series grew out of Władysław Panas’s book “Oko cadyka” (The Tzaddik’s Eye), with the Seer as the guide through that lost world. Here he returns, this time among kings and writers.

Tickets and time

There is no separate ticket. The museum’s price list has only the tower itself: 20 PLN standard and 15 PLN reduced, and on the way up you pass, according to Gość Niedzielny of 5 June 2026, the season’s other two temporary exhibitions. The combined ticket at 26 PLN (reduced 18 PLN) adds Lublin Cathedral next door: its acoustic sacristy, treasury and crypts. Reduced tickets are for children aged 3 and over, school pupils, students up to 26, seniors and disabled visitors; younger children go free. The visiting page lists no free-admission day.

The dates are given in months, not days. The museum says only “May - October 2026” and has announced no opening or closing day in its news. This page therefore uses 1 May and 31 October 2026; the last day of October is a Saturday.

The hours change on 1 October. Until the end of September the tower is open 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 Tuesday drops out: 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. There is a guided tour on Saturdays at 15:30.

Allow 15-20 minutes for the exhibition and an hour and a half for the whole tower with the terrace. The times in the museum’s table are entry times; the building closes half an hour after the second session ends: until the end of September at 18:00 (Tuesday to Thursday), 21:00 (Friday) and 20:00 (Saturday and Sunday), in October at 18:00 (Wednesday to Friday), 20:00 (Saturday) and 19:00 (Sunday). The portraits come at the end of the route, so if you walk in at the last entry, that half hour covers the exhibition or the terrace, not both. Every day is split into two sessions with an hour’s break between them, so do not plan to walk in during the break.

English on site: the museum publishes nothing in English about this exhibition and says nothing about English labels, audio guides or tours. Since each sitter’s name is lettered into the portrait, you can put names to faces without Polish; the stories behind them are what you will miss, and the Context section above covers the main ones.

Who it is for: families with school-age children, who can play spot-the-king on the last floors, and first-time visitors who want a quick who’s who of Lublin before walking the Old Town. Skip it if you are after historic originals: these are contemporary works by one artist, and the tower’s sacred art is on the floors below. The tower has no lift, so the show is out of reach for anyone who cannot manage 207 steps.

What the press says

No English-language coverage was found. There are four mentions, all in the Lublin edition of the Catholic weekly “Gość Niedzielny” and all by Małgorzata Oroń; none is a review; they are previews, an opening report and season guides to the tower.

• Gość Niedzielny Lublin (28 April 2026, Małgorzata Oroń): a season preview reporting that the top level of the tower, home to the Gallery under the Rooster, would be filled with work by Jola Michalak - article , in Polish.
• Gość Niedzielny Lublin (25 May 2026, Małgorzata Oroń): a report on the season opening, in which the show of figures from the city’s past waits at the very top, just before the panorama - article , in Polish.
• Gość Niedzielny Lublin (5 June 2026, Małgorzata Oroń): for the Corpus Christi long weekend, it lists the tower’s three temporary exhibitions and places Jolanta Michalak’s work on the highest floors - article , in Polish.
• Gość Niedzielny Lublin (5 September 2026, Małgorzata Oroń): an autumn guide to the tower that fits the portraits into its idea of the tower as a place where the city’s past meets contemporary art - article , in Polish.

See also

• Trinity Tower - the venue profile: the archdiocese’s permanent display of sacred art, the tower’s timber frame and a terrace 40 metres up.
• Holy Dialogue - the other temporary show on the same ticket, in the hall at the start of the route according to Gość Niedzielny; Gothic and Baroque sculpture from the KUL Museum, until 31 October 2026.
• Museum of the History of the City of Lublin - the city’s story from its first settlers to 1944, inside the Kraków Gate; if the portraits leave you wanting a timeline, this is where to get it.
• Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre Centre - the story of Lublin’s Jewish town, where the Seer of Lublin lived and taught, and the place where Jolanta Michalak’s Podzamcze series was shown in 2025.

Current hours and prices are on the Trinity Tower’s visiting page , and the exhibition description on the museum’s exhibition page , both in Polish.

Museum profile: Lublin Archdiocese Museum - Trinity Tower .