Regional Museum in Krasnystaw

Practical info

What to expect

Krasnystaw is a small town in south-eastern Poland, roughly midway between the regional capital Lublin and the renaissance town of Zamość. Its museum began as a newspaper campaign: in 1930 Józef Nikodem Kłosowski, editor of the local weekly, urged readers to bring down from their attics whatever survived of village life around the town. That collection was scattered during the Second World War, and the idea only returned in 1957, when a local history society moved its display into the former Jesuit college under the painting teacher and Home Army veteran Zygmunt Tokarzewski. Between 1958 and 1962 the whole museum occupied a single room; it now holds around 10,000 objects across archaeology, ethnography, history, numismatics, early and sacred art, and hop-growing and brewing.

The building is an exhibit in its own right. The Jesuit college was raised between 1695 and about 1740; its three wings and the adjoining church of St Francis Xavier enclose a square courtyard. Rococo frescoes from the first half of the eighteenth century survive in the old refectory, uncovered from beneath layers of plaster during survey work in 1976. The museum moved into the restored west wing in 1999, and since the east wing was rebuilt in 2008 it has shared the complex with the district public library and a youth cultural centre.

The permanent displays run from prehistory to the twentieth century. One traces the region from the late Palaeolithic onwards; another gathers close to five hundred documents, seal matrices, maps and banners covering the town from its charter as the settlement of Szczekarzów in 1394; a third presents 335 finds from excavations in the town itself. Beyond them are Sarmatian portraits of the Potocki family, benefactors of the Krasnystaw Jesuits, carved details from the castle at Krupe, reconstructed interiors of a smithy, a peasant cottage and a manor kitchen, paintings Antoni Teslar made in the town in 1941, and a small collection of tankards and brewing memorabilia tied to the Chmielaki hop harvest festival held here since 1971.

Tips

The museum opens every day except Mondays and public holidays: Tuesday to Friday from 8.00 to 16.00, Saturday and Sunday from 10.00 to 15.00. A standard ticket is 14 PLN and a reduced one 8 PLN; a family ticket at 30 PLN covers up to two adults with as many as five children under 18. Children under seven enter free, and on Thursdays admission is free for everyone. Museum lessons for school groups are also free of charge.

The museum publishes neither online ticketing nor a suggested visit length. Extra closures are announced only in the news section, so check the site or ring 82 576-36-63 before travelling over a long weekend. Alongside the permanent rooms there is an active programme of temporary exhibitions, evening events and an open-air summer cinema in the college grounds, and the website offers a virtual tour and a historic photo gallery of the town.

Getting there

The museum occupies the west wing of the former Jesuit college at ul. Marszałka J. Piłsudskiego 5A, 22-300 Krasnystaw. The complex stands just south-west of the market square, its facades turned east onto a broad forecourt fenced from the street with cast-iron railings, next to the church of St Francis Xavier and the old bishop’s house, so it is a few minutes on foot from the centre of town. The museum lists no bus routes and no parking information of its own; for questions call 82 576-36-63 or write to sekretariat@muzeumkrasnystaw.pl.

Nearby museums

Krasnystaw sits between two obvious stops on a tour of eastern Lubelskie. The Museum of the Chełm Land covers nearby Chełm, the bishopric whose initiative first brought the Jesuits to Krasnystaw, while the Zamość Museum interprets the renaissance town built by the Zamoyski family. Further west, the National Museum in Lublin at Lublin Castle supervised the Krasnystaw collections for years.