Museum of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

What to expect

The short answer first, because it saves you a walk: the Museum of the Catholic University of Lublin has no room you can enter at Al. Racławickie 14 at the time of writing, October 2026. Room 29 of the university’s main building, the old Dominican refectory that serves as the gallery, is under renovation. In the museum’s own words it is “closed until further notice”, and neither the university nor Lublin’s city portal gives a reopening date.

The collection waiting for that room carries real weight, though. Its centre is Silesian Gothic and later church art: 26 works from the 14th to the 18th century, 14 of them carved figures from the 15th and 16th. They came from the stores of the pre-war Erzbischöfliches Museum Breslau in 1956. A rector had asked Poland’s dioceses to help restock a university that lost its collection in the war, and Wrocław was the only one to answer.

Once the doors reopen, the rest falls into a few clear groups. Polish painting and prints come mostly from the Litawiński gift of 1986, over 400 works including Piotr Michałowski, Włodzimierz Tetmajer, Rafał Malczewski and Władysław Skoczylas. Antoni Michalak, who taught painting here until 1969, left the portraits of the university’s rectors. Then there are three icons by Jerzy Nowosielski, Meissen, Vienna and Berlin porcelain, and Netherlandish and Italian pictures bought in the early 1960s.

Visitors who know Kraków’s John Paul II trail will find the other half of that story here. Karol Wojtyła taught philosophy at this university from 1954 to 1978, and the museum holds photographs and papers from those years plus material from his visit as pope in 1987.

Best for art historians, specialists in church art and anyone with a precise research question, who should write to the office. For a weekend visitor this address is a signpost, not a destination. See part of the collection at the Trinity Tower until 31 October 2026, browse the online catalogues, and give the courtyard monument ten minutes if you are passing.

Tips

• Do not travel for the hall. It is shut with no announced reopening, so check muzeum.kul.pl before you build a Lublin day around it. Admission will be free when it reopens - the one ticketing fact the museum states.
• The courtyard monument is a ten-minute stop. The museum is reached through the main building’s courtyard. Since 1983 it has held Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz’s monument to John Paul II and Primate Stefan Wyszyński. It shows their Vatican meeting of 23 October 1978.
• The Trinity Tower show is the way in this autumn. “Holy Dialogue. Sacred Art from the KUL Museum Collection” runs until 31 October 2026 and is included in the tower ticket (20 PLN, 15 PLN reduced). Curator Anna Szlązak-Nowak put it together with second-year art history students from the university.
• What to look for at the tower. The curator, interviewed by the regional paper Dziennik Wschodni, picked out a small 16th-century Venetian Sacra Conversazione and a Gothic Madonna of about 1500. Also the Holy Family altarpiece from Kliczków and rococo angels by Sebastian Zeisl. Michalak’s large Crucifixion with St Mary Magdalene and an olive-wood and mother-of-pearl Jerusalem cross complete the list. She calls the show intimate, so expect a single small room, not a survey.
• Browse from home. The museum runs two free online databases, one for the art and one for historical memorabilia. Only a menu item on muzeum.kul.pl points to them, and while the hall is shut they are the only way to see the holdings at will.
• Researchers: write, do not knock. Staff work in a temporary office in the John Paul II College, ul. Hieronima Łopacińskiego 5, room C-233, on +48 81 445 40 29 or at muzeum@kul.pl . The director is Dr Elżbieta Błotnicka-Mazur.
• The collection travels. Recent loan shows went to the Ducal Castle in Szczecin, to Biłgoraj and to Lewków in Greater Poland, so the nearest KUL exhibition may be in another region altogether.
• Accessibility: call first. The museum publishes no accessibility information. According to the city portal it is eventually to expand into adjacent rooms, historic cellars and a glazed cloister garth, so the entrance may well change after reopening.

Getting there

The KUL main building faces the Ogród Saski park at Al. Racławickie 14, where the city centre’s main street runs out to the west.

• On foot: from plac Litewski, about 1.1 km as the crow flies, it is a 10 to 12 minute walk straight out along Krakowskie Przedmieście. From the Kraków Gate and the Old Town allow about 25 minutes.
• Bus and trolleybus: the KUL 01 and KUL 02 stops are right by the building (MPK timetable valid from 1 October 2026). Buses: 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 26, 31, 44, 55, 57 and 74. Trolleybuses 150, 151, 155 and 158 stop here too, as do night lines N2 and N3 and line 950. Lublin has no trams.
• By car: the museum says nothing about parking and the courtyard is university ground. Use the paid parking zone on Al. Racławickie and the side streets.
• The office has its own door. ul. Łopacińskiego 5 is on the same campus, a few minutes’ walk from the main building.

Nearby

If you have a day in Lublin, spend the KUL part of it in the Old Town. The Lublin Archdiocese Museum in the Trinity Tower stands about 1.7 km east as the crow flies, beside the cathedral, and holds the “Holy Dialogue” show until 31 October 2026. The climb ends at the city’s highest viewpoint, so one tower ticket covers both the art and the view.

Two other names nearby will tempt you, and both are shut. The Museum of the Marie Curie-Skłodowska University , about 250 m away in the UMCS Main Library, is closed until further notice while that building is renovated. The Museum of the Eastern Lands of the Former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Lubomirski Palace on plac Litewski is closed for works too.

Background

In 2013 curators at the Lublin Museum (Muzeum Lubelskie) recognised four objects from the university’s pre-war collection, which had ended up in their stores. The rest was taken by the German occupiers in December 1939 and has never been found. That collection had begun in 1932 with a gift from Fr Jan Władziński (1861-1935): paintings, sculpture, applied art, coins and militaria.

So nearly everything you will see after the renovation was gathered after the war, and largely by private generosity. The 1956 appeal and the Wrocław gift started it. Stanisława Witkowska gave over 300 objects in 1991, including works by Stanisław Noakowski. Joanna Gliwa’s legacy of 1994 brought Józef Pankiewicz’s watercolour “Flowers in a Vase”, and 2023-2024 added paintings from Alicja Zadziorko and the estate of the sculptor Halina Korn-Żuławska.

The museum in its present form dates only from 1 September 2016, when the university merged its art collection with a history museum opened in room 29 in 2008. Its debut was “100 for 100”, the hundred most valuable works from the KUL collections, at the Royal Castle in Warsaw in 2016-2017. After the renovation the plan is for separate galleries of medieval art, early modern art, Polish and foreign painting, and a room for temporary shows.