Józef Czechowicz Literary Museum

Practical info

What to expect

Lublin, the largest city in eastern Poland, had one great modernist poet, and this is his house of record. The museum, which calls itself simply the Józef Czechowicz Museum, is the literary branch of the National Museum in Lublin and collects, catalogues and shows twentieth-century Polish literature. The idea came from Lublin writers in the 1950s and was backed by friends of the poet who were still alive - Feliks Araszkiewicz, Konrad Bielski, Wacław Gralewski and Kazimierz Andrzej Jaworski - who pledged their keepsakes and their inscribed copies of his books. Tadeusz Kłak assembled the documents and drafted the first exhibition script between 1963 and 1965, and the museum opened on 9 September 1968, on the twenty-ninth anniversary of Czechowicz’s death. For almost thirty years it occupied a former monastic building on Narutowicza street; since 9 September 2002 it has been housed in a townhouse at Złota 3, given to the city for cultural use by the Riabinin family.

The permanent display, Józef Czechowicz (1903-1939), gathers documents, photographs, manuscripts, the slim volumes of poetry published in his lifetime and the post-war editions of his work. Very few personal objects survived him. His Warsaw flat on Narbutta street, abandoned in the first days of September 1939, was stripped of anything of value soon afterwards, though Wacław Mrozowski managed to carry out the manuscripts, typescripts and notebooks. What remains on show is intimate and sparse: two small bells brought back from France, a tablecloth and napkins embroidered with the poet’s initials by his sister Katarzyna Głuszewska, and a teaspoon engraved with the initials of his father Paweł. The point of the room is the contrast between those few things and the size of the literary estate left by a writer who died at thirty-six.

Behind the display sits a serious archive. It holds autograph manuscripts, letters to family and friends, fragments of his diary, school certificates, his diploma from the Institute of Special Education in Warsaw and some fifty volumes from his private library, most of them inscribed by their authors. There are papers of other writers of the Lublin region, among them Franciszka Arnsztajnowa, Józef Łobodowski, Anna Kamieńska and Jan Pocek, plus letters and poetry manuscripts by Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Julian Tuwim and Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński; the reference library runs to roughly ten thousand volumes. The museum still works as a living literary venue, running the Reflektor Prize, a national recitation competition and a regular programme of author evenings.

Tips

The museum is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 17:00 and closed on Sundays and Mondays. A standard ticket costs 10 PLN and a reduced one 8 PLN. Free-entry days are announced month by month: in August 2026 they fall on Thursdays, and the museum is closed on 15 August, so check the current notice before you set out. A guided tour costs an extra 35 PLN on top of admission, a museum lesson 40 PLN and a workshop 45 PLN; these are arranged through the National Museum’s education department (edukacja@mnwl.pl, tel. +48 81 537 96 15), which works on weekdays from 7:30 to 15:30. Independent visitors can use the museum’s interactive mobile guide to the permanent display. Photography and filming are permitted for private use only, with no right of publication and no flash, additional lighting or tripods.

Getting there

The museum occupies a townhouse at ul. Złota 3, 20-112 Lublin, in the Śródmieście district within the historic old town. Its website gives no transport directions and no parking information, so treat it as a walking stop: the surrounding streets are the oldest part of Lublin and easily covered on foot. To reach the branch directly, call +48 81 532 30 90 or +48 81 532 30 91, or write to czechowicz@mnwl.pl.

Nearby museums

Czechowicz is one of several Lublin branches of the same institution, so the obvious companion visit is Lublin Castle and the National Museum with its Holy Trinity Chapel. A short walk away, the Museum of the History of the City of Lublin in the Kraków Gate covers the city Czechowicz wrote his best-known poem about. The literary thread continues at the Wincenty Pol Manor House, the museum’s temporary home after it lost its first premises.