Janusz Peter Regional Museum in Tomaszów Lubelski

Practical info

What to expect

This museum began as one man’s private obsession. Dr Janusz Peter ran the county hospital in Tomaszów Lubelski, a small town on the Roztocze uplands in the far south-east of Poland; he was a surgeon, a local historian and the author of eight monographs on the town and its region. The museum opened officially on 7 October 1962, in the hospital itself, around 1,700 objects that all still belonged to him personally. The collection was taken into state ownership in 1967, moved in 1975 to the former county assembly building and placed under the district museum in Zamość, and in 1984 was given 830 square metres in the newly built veterans’ house. It became an independent institution again in 1999, run by the Tomaszów county authority, and since 2020 its exhibitions have been housed in a converted former boarding school at ul. Wyspiańskiego 8a. The holdings now run to roughly 15,000 items across five departments: archaeology, history, numismatics, ethnography and art.

The permanent displays tell four separate stories. The Battles of Tomaszów in September 1939 covers the fighting around the town during the German invasion. Czermno: A Stronghold Between East and West presents excavations at the early medieval fortified settlement at nearby Czermno. Material and Spiritual Culture of the Tomaszów Countryside is the ethnographic room, and Dr Janusz Peter’s Parlour reconstructs the world of the founder. Temporary shows grow out of regional archaeology, such as Chotyniec: The Western Gate of Scythia, built around finds from that site.

The institution also runs a second, very different site: the Memorial Chamber of Communist Terror at ul. Lwowska 64, in a surviving cell block of the local communist security service. Opponents of the regime, mostly soldiers of the Home Army, the Peasant Battalions and the Freedom and Independence association, were held, tortured and killed here between 1944 and 1956. The chamber opened to visitors in 2010, on the 65th anniversary of a raid that freed the prisoners, and a new exhibition on the local security apparatus and its victims was installed in 2023.

Tips

The museum keeps two seasons. From 1 May to 30 September it is open Tuesday to Friday 9am to 4pm and at weekends 9am to 5pm; from 1 October to 30 April it is Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 4pm. Monday is closed all year. A standard ticket is 10 PLN, concessions 8 PLN for pupils, students and pensioners with proof of status, and a group rate of 5 PLN applies to organised groups of more than ten people and to holders of the Polish large-family card; groups must be booked in advance. A guide costs 30 PLN and a workshop place 10 PLN.

The Memorial Chamber of Communist Terror is free but keeps shorter hours, Tuesday to Friday 8am to noon. At weekends, on Mondays and outside those hours it can be visited by groups of at least ten people if arranged at least a day ahead. The Wyspiańskiego building has a lift, exhibition rooms accessible to wheelchair users and adapted toilets on the ground floor; staff can be called on +48 84 663 42 34. Assistance dogs are welcome.

Getting there

The exhibition building stands at ul. Wyspiańskiego 8a, 22-600 Tomaszów Lubelski, on ground next to the town’s main secondary school: the entrance faces the path running from the school’s main gate, reached by a ramp that doubles as the way into the adjoining car park. The office is next door at number 8b. Tomaszów Lubelski lies on the Roztocze uplands more than 100 km south-east of Lublin, on the road towards the Ukrainian border crossing at Hrebenne, so most visitors arrive by car. The Memorial Chamber is in another part of town, at ul. Lwowska 64.

Nearby museums

Tomaszów Lubelski sits well within a Roztocze and Zamość circuit. Some fifteen kilometres south is the Bełżec extermination camp memorial museum, which carries further the wartime thread running through the Tomaszów collection. To the north-west, the Zamość Museum in the Renaissance old town was this museum’s parent institution from 1975 to 1999, and the Guciów farmstead near Zwierzyniec makes a natural stop on the way.