Villa Atma

Atma is a Zakopane-style wooden villa where Karol Szymanowski, the leading Polish composer of the generation after Chopin's centenary, lived from 1930 to 1936. In those years he completed Harnasie, the ballet built on Podhale highlander music and dance, along with other late works, and the house is the reason those pieces sound the way they do - Szymanowski had been collecting and listening to highland music and found in it what Bartok found in Hungarian village song. The building is now a branch of the National Museum in Krakow, showing his rooms, the piano, manuscripts, photographs and personal things, and it runs chamber recitals in the main room, which seats a small audience and has good acoustics for that scale. The name Atma is Sanskrit for soul or self, added in the 1920s, before his time, and Szymanowski kept it.

History

The house was built in the late 19th century as a guest house in the Zakopane style and enlarged to seven rooms in 1926, and the name Atma, Sanskrit for "soul", was added in the 1920s. Karol Szymanowski rented it as his main home from 1930 to 1936, shortly before his death in 1937, and it was later bought through a fundraising campaign led by the writer Jerzy Waldorff; it is now a department of the National Museum in Kraków (Wikipedia, Villa Atma).

The main sights

• Szymanowski's rooms - as he used them from 1930 to 1936.
• His piano and manuscripts - along with photographs and personal effects.
• The Harnasie years - where the highlander ballet and late works were written.
• Chamber recitals - held in the main room for small audiences.

When to go

All year. Two hours.

Things to know

The house is small - an hour or so unless there is a concert. Closed Mondays and for periods of maintenance. Recital seats are few and go quickly. Labelling is partly Polish only.

Nearby

Krupowki and the Zakopane style villas are a short walk away.

Key facts