Czartoryski Museum

Established in 1796 by Princess Izabela Czartoryska, the Czartoryski Museum is one of Poland’s oldest institutions, renowned for its extensive collection of European paintings, decorative arts, and ancient artifacts. Highlights include Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Lady with an Ermine’ and Rembrandt’s ‘Landscape with the Good Samaritan’. The museum is part of the National Museum in Kraków and is located at ul. Pijarska 15, 31-015 Kraków. Visitors can explore permanent exhibitions across several historic buildings, including the Palace, Monastery, and Gallery of Ancient Art. The museum offers guided tours, audioguides, a café, and a shop. It is accessible to individuals with mobility impairments and provides sensory displays for the visually impaired. Tickets are available online and at the ticket office. Admission is free on Tuesdays. For more information, visit the official website: https://mnk.pl/en/branch/mnk-czartoryski-museum

Planning your visit

The Czartoryski Museum exists because of a princess with a sense of history. Izabela Czartoryska founded it in 1796, the year after Poland was partitioned out of existence, explicitly to preserve national memory when the nation itself had been erased from the map — one of the oldest museums in Europe and among the first anywhere founded as an act of cultural resistance. Its most famous holding is Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, one of only a handful of surviving Leonardo paintings and the reason many visitors come. Rembrandt's Landscape with the Good Samaritan hangs nearby.

The collection's survival is its own drama: the paintings were hidden, moved and looted repeatedly across two centuries, including seizure by the Nazis, and Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man, taken in 1939, has never been recovered — its empty frame is sometimes displayed. The museum reopened in 2019 after a long renovation and is now part of the National Museum in Kraków.

It sits in the Old Town on ul. Pijarska, close to the Floriańska Gate. Admission is free on Tuesdays, which predictably makes Tuesdays busy. Bookable options include entry tickets with museum passes, private art tours focused on the Leonardo, and guided tours combining the museum with Kraków's Old Town — sensible given how compact the historic centre is. The building is accessible for visitors with mobility impairments and offers sensory displays for the visually impaired. Current availability is shown below.