MNK Arsenal

The tradition of collecting military items and historical memorabilia at the National Museum in Krakow was not decided by the management of the institution, established in 1879, but by the society. Initially, the Museum was to be an institution devoted exclusively to art, but the inhabitants of the former lands of the Republic of Poland, moved by the fact of the creation of the first Polish national museum institution under the partitions, began to send gifts to the Museum, including weapons and uniforms that were heirlooms of their ancestors. This public initiative led to a change in the Museum’s profile and ultimately to the creation of one of the largest and most unique collections of historical militaria in Poland. 

The Gallery of Arms and Colour since the 1990s. was presented in a permanent exhibition in the MNK Main Building, in the halls on the high ground floor of the building. Because of the systematic renovations of the exhibition spaces, as well as in connection with the regulation of the status of the Arsenal at the Princes Czartoryski Museum, it was decided to present the militaria here.

The city arsenal was founded in the middle of the 16th century, and in the 17th and 19th centuries it underwent further reconstructions. At the beginning of the 19th century, the building was preserved as one of the few remaining fragments of the city wall ring that were not demolished during the dismantling and transformation of the fortifications into the so-called Planty Park. 

In 1874, the Krakow municipality decided to transfer the former arsenal, along with the adjacent towers of Stolarska and Ciesielska, the so-called Monastery and Palace at Pijarska Street, to Władysław Czartoryski, for the purpose of presenting the collections of the Czartoryski family brought to Krakow from Paris. 

Until the 1960s, the Arsenal was the place where the collections of the Czartoryski Library were stored. In later years, it performed warehouse and exhibition functions. In the years 2014-2016 and 2017-2021, a comprehensive restoration of the building took place, followed by the opening of “The Origins. Gallery of Ancient Art” and the exhibition of the Arms and Colour militaries in Old Poland. 

Placing the exhibition Arms and Colour in the Arsenal takes us into the past of this fragment of the former walls of Krakow. The military collection, part of the holdings of the National Museum in Kraków, was assembled, like the Czartoryski family collection, in the spirit of preserving the heritage of the former Polish Republic during the period of partitions. As early as the 1960s, two outstanding curators of the respective collections, Zdzisław Żygulski Jr. and Zbigniew Bocheński, proposed uniting both military collections across the two floors of the building, which had previously served as an arms depot. Since 2023, Krakow’s collections of old arms and colour have been presented in the Arsenal.