Museum of Southern Podlasie in Biała Podlaska

Practical info

What to expect

Biała Podlaska sits at the far northern tip of the Lublin region, close to the Belarusian border, and its museum occupies what survives of the fortified palace complex of the Radziwiłłs, one of the greatest magnate families of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The institution uses the gate tower, the quarter-circle tunnel passage linking it to the rest of the residence, the former palace chapel and the western outbuilding. It opened on 26 October 1966 as a regional museum, became a district museum in 1975 and took its present name in 1998, the year it was entered in Poland’s State Register of Museums. It moved into the Radziwiłł residence in early 1983 and celebrates its sixtieth anniversary in 2026; the current permanent displays date from the full refurbishment of the gate tower in 2018-2019 and the restoration of the whole complex completed in 2021.

The holding that makes the trip worthwhile is the collection of nearly 1700 icons, among the largest in Poland. Most come from the vast territories of the former Russian Empire, the oldest from the seventeenth century and the bulk from the nineteenth. They are shown in the permanent exhibition The Icon: A Sacred Mystery, arranged in three rooms and opening with images of Christ and the Mother of God. The main building also holds an archaeology display covering almost a hundred thousand years of the Podlasie and Polesie borderland, from mammoth bones to the Bronze Age; two history galleries, one on Biała under the Radziwiłłs and one on the town between 1795 and 1939, with material on the old Biała Academy, the Podlasie Uniates and the Polish national uprisings; and a painting gallery devoted to horses, riders and carriages in nineteenth and twentieth-century Polish art, built up thanks to the nearby stud farm at Janów Podlaski and the painters’ camps the museum ran there between 1975 and 1998.

Two ethnographic rooms cover the folk culture of Southern Podlasie, with costume woven in the local perebor technique, the bearded-man ritual mask, painted eggs and grey-fired siwak pottery, alongside a small display of domestic Catholic devotional objects. A separate stop is the south-eastern turret, built in the mid-seventeenth century and covered inside and out with sgraffito decoration, including four medallions under the dome showing Radziwiłł eagles with the family’s Trąby coat of arms; it houses an exhibition on the archaeology of the Biała castle.

Tips

A combined ticket for all three buildings, the tower, the turret and the western outbuilding, costs 15 PLN full price and 10 PLN reduced. The tower with the eastern turret alone, which covers all the permanent exhibitions, costs 12 PLN and 8 PLN, and the western outbuilding with the temporary shows 5 PLN and 3 PLN. A family ticket for two adults and two children works out at 10, 8 or 3 PLN per person, groups of ten or more pay less, and children under seven enter free. The permanent exhibitions are free on Mondays, and during the summer season from 1 July to 31 August free on Tuesdays instead. Watch the last admission: 15:00 from September to June and 15:30 in July and August. The museum is closed on Saturdays outside the summer season and on Mondays during it.

A guided tour for a group of up to 30 people costs 50 PLN for schoolchildren and students and 80 PLN for other groups; a guided educational walk around the town is priced separately. Audio guides in Polish, English and Russian are lent free of charge at the ticket desk and are also available as a phone app, which makes an independent visit workable for foreign visitors. The main building has a step-free entrance, a lift to the first floor, an accessible toilet on the ground floor, a hearing loop at the ticket desk and a model of the palace complex labelled in Braille; in the turret only the ground floor is reachable by wheelchair. The exhibition at the Martyrdom and History Branch on ul. Łomaska is closed until further notice.

Getting there

The museum is at ul. Warszawska 12 in Biała Podlaska (postcode 21-500), inside the Radziwiłł castle and park complex on the edge of the town centre. You enter through the gateway of the old residence; the western outbuilding, which holds the temporary exhibitions, is entered from the Radziwiłł Park side. There is a car park at the museum, and vehicles carrying a disabled parking card may drive into the grounds themselves. Biała Podlaska lies about 130 km north of Lublin, on the main road and rail route running from Warsaw to Terespol on the Belarusian border.

Nearby museums

Biała Podlaska sits away from the region’s busiest museum routes, but within an hour’s drive you can reach the August Zamoyski museum in Jabłoń, devoted to the sculptor born into the family that once owned these estates, and the Łuków land museum. Further south along the Bug river stands the Włodawa synagogue complex, which together with the Biała icon collection tells the story of a multi-faith borderland.