The National Museum in Warsaw

The building is a heavy modernist block from the 1930s and the collection inside is one of the largest in the country. Its most unusual holding is the Faras Gallery: wall paintings cut from a cathedral buried under sand on the Nile, excavated by Polish archaeologists in the 1960s before the site went under a reservoir, and shown here in a dim reconstructed layout of the church with bishops, saints and archangels in ochre and blue. Elsewhere there are medieval altarpieces gathered from across the country, a nineteenth century gallery with the huge historical canvases of Jan Matejko, and floors of ancient, decorative and twentieth century art.

History

The museum was founded on 20 May 1862 as the Museum of Fine Arts and renamed the National Museum in 1916, when the collections of several other societies and museums were added. Its building on Jerusalem Avenue, designed by Tadeusz Tolwiński, was built between 1927 and 1938; an exhibition of decorative art opened in its first two wings in 1932, and the whole building was inaugurated on 18 June 1938 (Wikipedia, National Museum in Warsaw).

The main sights

• The Faras Gallery - Nubian wall paintings from a Nile cathedral, arranged as the church stood.
• The medieval gallery - carved and painted altarpieces brought from churches across Poland.
• The nineteenth century rooms - Matejko's monumental canvases and Polish painting around them.
• The design and applied art floors - furniture, glass and graphics from several centuries.

When to go

Any time of year, and a good option on a wet day. One weekday is free to the permanent galleries and is correspondingly busy. The museum closes on Mondays. Large temporary shows sell timed tickets separately and can absorb an extra hour or two, so decide in advance how much you want to see.

Practical notes

The building is a maze and the signage does not help; people lose the thread between floors. Some rooms are closed on rotation without notice, and the Faras Gallery is deliberately dark, which suits the paintings but not photography. Labelling in English is patchy outside the main galleries. The cafe is small and gets crowded at lunchtime.

Nearby

The riverside boulevards, the Copernicus science centre and the old town are all within a short tram ride.

Key facts