Museum of the History of the City of Lublin

Practical info

What to expect

Lublin, the largest city in eastern Poland, kept two gates in its medieval walls, and this museum occupies one of them. The Krakow Gate was raised thanks to King Casimir the Great after the Tatar raid of 1341; a forward gate was added in the mid-16th century and the tower gained further storeys until the 18th century. The building shared the city’s fortunes, burning in the fire of 1575 that consumed almost all of Lublin, and its octagonal storey was later capped with a Baroque helm bearing the royal monogram SAR and the date of the repair, 1782.

In the early 19th century an image of the Virgin Mary was hung on the gate facing Krakowskie Przedmiescie, and in 1839 an image of Saint Anthony of Padua on the Old Town side. The gate was badly damaged in the Second World War; conservation begun in 1959 uncovered its stone-and-brick decoration and adapted the interiors for museum use. The historical branch of the Lublin Museum moved in during 1965, and since 1979 the gate has been the seat of the museum the institution itself calls the Museum of the Lublin City History, now marking sixty years of a museum inside the Krakow Gate.

The permanent display, Historia Miasta (History of the City), traces Lublin from the settlement period of the 6th to 8th centuries AD up to 1944, through archaeological finds, portraits of people whose lives were bound up with the city, printed ephemera on local schooling and culture, and material on Lublin’s industry. The branch also holds runs of periodicals, occasional publications, playbills and posters, memorabilia of the January Uprising of 1863 and of exiles sent to Siberia, and paintings, postcards and photographs of Lublin from the 19th century to the 1960s. The route ends on the topmost storey, roughly 36 metres above street level, with a panorama of the city.

Tips

The branch is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 to 17:00, and closed on Sundays and Mondays; it also stays shut on 15 August. A standard ticket is 10 PLN and a reduced one 8 PLN, and in August free-entry days fall on the 4th, 12th, 20th and 25th. A guided tour costs 35 PLN on top of admission, a museum lesson 40 PLN and a workshop 45 PLN. The National Museum in Lublin sells tickets online, at its desks and through the paymove app, with ticket machines standing in the castle courtyard.

Photography and filming of the interiors and exhibits are allowed for private use only, with no right of publication and no flash, extra lighting or tripods. The display climbs through successive storeys of the tower up to that viewpoint 36 metres above the street, so allow for the ascent.

Getting there

The museum is at Pl. Łokietka 3, 20-109 Lublin, inside the Krakow Gate itself, where the promenade of Krakowskie Przedmiescie ends and the Old Town begins. It is the most recognisable landmark in the city centre and an easy walk from either Plac Litewski or Plac Zamkowy. The museum’s website gives no separate bus lines for this branch: the public transport directions it publishes lead to the main seat on the castle hill, a few minutes’ walk from the gate through the Old Town.

Nearby museums

A short walk east brings you to Lublin Castle and the National Museum in Lublin, this branch’s parent institution, where the city’s story is filled out by the art collections and the Holy Trinity Chapel. The other Old Town gate houses the Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN centre and its work on Jewish Lublin, while close by stands the museum of the poet Jozef Czechowicz, another branch of the same national museum.