What the Castle Attics Hide

From 6 November the National Museum in Lublin will open a place visitors do not normally enter: the ethnographic collections storeroom under the roof of the castle’s south wing. It is one of the displays marking the museum’s 120th anniversary, and you will be able to go in with a guide on one of eight dates up to 19 December. The museum publishes no English text on the jubilee displays, so the quotation below is our translation of its Polish description.

National Museum in Lublin on the exhibition:

In the south wing, right under the roof, on an area of 380 m², is the storeroom of the ethnographic collections - objects from the Lublin region, from the lands lying between the Vistula and the Bug. It holds gifts from the first great Lublin exhibitions, held in 1901 - the Exhibition of Art and Antiquities and the Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition - as well as acquisitions from the post-war years and from our own time. Only a few people can spend time with them day to day. For the jubilee we are opening the door of the ethno-treasury for a moment and inviting you on “a trip into the past”.

What to expect

The display will take place in the storeroom itself, not in an exhibition gallery. According to the description in the museum’s ticketing system, the room holds some 17,500 objects from the Lublin region. Among the objects, the museum names:

• A 17th-century mould for baking Christmas wafers - one of the oldest dated objects in the collection.
• Brocade bodices woven through with gold thread, from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries - a collection the museum calls especially valuable.
• Folk carvings of saints from wayside shrines, made in the 19th century.
• A ceramic rabbit figurine 3 cm tall - the smallest object in the storeroom.
• A dugout canoe 4.5 metres long, hollowed out of a single trunk - the largest.

The museum does not say which of these objects the guide will show, or how the storeroom will be prepared for the visits. What is known is that a visit will last an hour and a half. The rooms themselves have been renovated recently: a 2023 project, which the museum lists as completed, covered the roof flashing above the storeroom, the doors, the walls and the floors, partly funded by a grant from the culture minister.

Context

The Lublin Museum opened on 12 December 1906. In its 120th year its successor, the National Museum in Lublin, is showing one gift after another all year long, as its way of thanking the donors. This display belongs to the cycle’s final round, which runs until 3 January 2027.

The ethnographic collection is older than the museum itself. In June 1901 Lublin staged two large exhibitions, conceived by the philologist and ethnographer Hieronim Łopaciński. At the Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition one of the 50 pavilions was given over to ethnography: costumes from the Lublin governorate, models of cottages and about a thousand painted Easter eggs. After it closed, exhibitors gave many of their objects to the future museum, and the organising committee bought cottage models, costumes and wedding branches from the peasants who had made them.

The collection covers the Lublin region between the Vistula and the Bug, where several ethnic groups and faiths lived side by side. The Second World War almost wiped it out: of some 2,800 objects, 933 survived. Since 1984 the museum has collected mainly folk art, because the material culture of the countryside is the field of the Lublin Village Open-Air Museum, which was split off from it in 1970. The museum tells the story of the collection on its ethnographic collections page (Polish).

Tickets and time

A guided visit costs 20 PLN. Tickets are sold in the museum’s ticketing system , where the visit is listed as “Dary, darczyńcy, kolekcje. Co kryją zamkowe poddasza?” (“Gifts, donors, collections. What the castle attics hide”). The museum’s price list does not include it, and the ticketing page gives no reduced price. The museum does not refund tickets once bought.

Can you see the storeroom without a guide? The museum does not say. The only way in it names is a guided visit on one of eight dates between 6 November and 19 December. The jubilee schedule gives 3 January 2027 as the end of the display, but the ticketing system currently has no dates after 19 December. Dates are few, so buy your ticket well ahead.

Accessibility: the museum states that the event is not architecturally accessible. Visitors with limited mobility should ask the education department for details before buying (edukacja@mnwl.pl ). Free-admission days are announced month by month on the museum’s visitor-information page (Polish), and they cover the permanent exhibitions. That page does not mention the storeroom visits, so do not count on free entry.

Combine the visit with the permanent exhibition “Folk Art of the Lublin Region” (Polish). It is the same department, only in display cases: religious paintings and carved saints from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It needs a separate permanent-exhibitions ticket, 20 PLN (reduced 15 PLN). Winter hours apply for the whole run: the permanent exhibitions are open Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday 9:00-17:00, Friday and Saturday 9:00-18:00, and closed on Mondays.

Allow two hours for both. On the Friday 16:00 dates, see the gallery before the visit, because afterwards there will be only half an hour until closing. Who it is for: adults curious about rural dress, crafts and customs, and anyone who wants a look behind the scenes of a museum. Who can skip it: a visitor with one short trip to the castle who wants to see the Holy Trinity Chapel, because the fixed visit times are hard to fit into such a plan.

Events

Guided visits of the storeroom, ticket 20 PLN, booking in the museum’s ticketing system :

• 6 November 2026, 16:00-17:30 - guided visit of the ethnographic collections storeroom
• 7 November 2026, 12:00-13:30 - guided visit of the ethnographic collections storeroom
• 20 November 2026, 16:00-17:30 - guided visit of the ethnographic collections storeroom
• 21 November 2026, 11:00-12:30 - guided visit of the ethnographic collections storeroom
• 4 December 2026, 16:00-17:30 - guided visit of the ethnographic collections storeroom
• 5 December 2026, 12:00-13:30 - guided visit of the ethnographic collections storeroom
• 18 December 2026, 16:00-17:30 - guided visit of the ethnographic collections storeroom
• 19 December 2026, 12:00-13:30 - guided visit of the ethnographic collections storeroom

See also

• National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) - the museum profile: the chapel with its 1418 frescoes, the keep and nine permanent exhibitions, among them the gallery of Lublin-region folk art.
• Lublin Village Open-Air Museum - the open-air museum that took over the material culture of the countryside: farmsteads, windmills and manor houses from across the region, which is what the castle storeroom no longer collects.
• Hoards of Small Copper Shillings Found at Rokitno - another jubilee display, about farmers who handed the museum the hoards they ploughed up; in the hall outside the coin gallery until 29 November 2026.
• Tomasz Zawadzki - matter painting from the same cycle, in the Zamek Group and Avant-garde gallery until 3 January 2027.

The full jubilee schedule is on the museum’s jubilee displays page (Polish only), and prices are on its ticket page .

Museum profile: National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) .