Regional Museum in Kraśnik with the Museum of the 24th Uhlan Regiment

Practical info

What to expect

Kraśnik is a district town in the Lubelskie voivodeship of eastern Poland, and its museum publishes itself today as the Museum of the 24th Uhlan Regiment. The institution opened in 1976 as a regional museum marking the town’s 600th anniversary, first in the ground floor rooms of a former monastery. Damp and fungus in the walls forced repeated moves until the county handed over an interwar two-storey brick building of 313 square metres, more than half of it given to displays. The separate Museum of the 24th Uhlan Regiment, named after Grand Crown Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, opened on 6 July 1995, the 75th anniversary of the regiment’s founding, in the building at ul. Józefa Piłsudskiego 7. After a refurbishment the site reopened on 7 October 2020, and since 2022 the whole branch has carried the regiment’s name under the National Museum in Lublin. The older regional title still circulates online, but there is one address to visit.

The core display, The 24th Uhlan Regiment: History and Tradition, follows the cavalry unit garrisoned in Kraśnik from 1922 to 1939, its defensive fighting in September 1939 and its later service with General Stanisław Maczek’s 1st Polish Armoured Division in the West. The museum keeps memorabilia left by the regiment’s veterans, and a veterans’ fellowship association still meets there. A second permanent display, The Battles of Kraśnik 1914-1915, covers the large engagement fought near the town in August 1914 between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies. A third, Old Kraśnik, is a photographic panel gallery of a townscape that no longer exists. A temporary exhibition, From the Prehistoric Pot to the Ethnographic Jug, sets local excavation finds beside the history of pottery in the area; the archaeological holdings are the collection the museum is best known for.

Tips

The branch is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:00, and closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. A standard ticket is 10 PLN and a concession 8 PLN. Instead of one fixed free day each week, the museum announces individual free-admission dates: in July 2026 these were 4, 8, 16, 22 and 31 July, in August 5, 13, 19 and 28 August, while on 15 August the museum stays shut. A guided tour costs 35 PLN on top of admission, a museum lesson 40 PLN and a workshop 45 PLN, all by prior arrangement on 81 884 34 85 or at krasnik@mnwl.pl. Groups can book a guided history walk through the town or a living-history session on the 1914 battle with period uniforms and weapons shown. Photography inside is for private use only, with no flash and no tripod.

Getting there

The museum is at ul. Józefa Piłsudskiego 7, 23-200 Kraśnik, a county town roughly fifty kilometres south-west of Lublin, so it works as a half-day trip from the regional capital. Older guides still print the former Regional Museum address at ul. Piłsudskiego 2A, so check the street number before setting off. The National Museum in Lublin lists neither bus routes nor parking on the branch pages, so confirm local transport by phone on 81 884 34 85.

Nearby museums

The natural pairing is the parent institution: the National Museum in Lublin at Lublin Castle sells a combined ticket that also covers its branches. Heading further south from Kraśnik you reach the Regional Museum in Janów Lubelski, while to the west, on the Vistula, sits the Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny.