Manggha Centre

Feliks Jasienski, a Krakow critic who wrote under the pen name Manggha, assembled some six and a half thousand pieces of Japanese art around 1900 - woodblock prints, arms, textiles, lacquer, ceramics - and gave the collection to the National Museum in 1920. It sat mostly in storage for seventy years. Andrzej Wajda, who saw part of it exhibited as a young man, used the money from the Kyoto Prize he received in 1987 to fund a building for it, and the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki designed the result without a fee: a low building on the bank opposite Wawel with a roof of curved concrete shells meant to read as waves, opened in 1994. It shows the Japanese collections in rotation, runs Japanese-language and cultural programmes, and has a tea pavilion and garden. The view of the castle from its terrace is one of the better ones in the city.

What you actually see

• A wave-roofed building - Arata Isozaki's design of 1994, given without a fee.
• Jasienski's collection - six and a half thousand Japanese pieces from around 1900.
• Rotating displays - prints, arms, lacquer and textiles shown in turn.
• A terrace facing Wawel - across the Vistula from the castle.

When to go

All year. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Only a fraction of the collection is on show at a time, and displays rotate for conservation. Closed Mondays. Temporary exhibitions sometimes take over the main space entirely.

Nearby

Wawel is across the footbridge; Kazimierz is downstream.