Explore Kraków

Rynek Underground is a museum beneath Kraków's Main Market Square, opened in 2010 after several years of archaeological excavation. Walkways of about 4,000 square metres lead past uncovered medieval stalls, roads and building remains, with excavated finds, models of the old town and multimedia displays; it is a branch of the Museum of Kraków.

Collegium Maius is the oldest building of the Jagiellonian University, assembled from town houses bought in the 15th century around an arcaded Gothic courtyard. It houses the Jagiellonian University Museum, with historic lecture rooms, the treasury, scientific instruments and the Jagiellonian Globe; a clock in the courtyard plays a tune with moving figures.

The Czartoryski Museum grew from the collection Princess Izabela Czartoryska began at Puławy in 1801 and has been in Kraków since the 1870s. Part of the National Museum since 2016, it reopened in 2019 after renovation; its galleries hold Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine alongside European paintings and decorative arts.

The Archdiocesan Museum occupies two historic houses at Kanonicza 19–21, on the street leading to Wawel Hill. Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II, lived here from 1951 to 1967; his rooms and belongings are shown beside sacred art from the 13th to the 20th century, including a mid-13th-century panel painting from Dębno.

The National Museum in Kraków, founded in 1879, runs a dozen branches across the city. Its Main Building on Aleja 3 Maja, a stone-clad block whose construction began in 1934, holds galleries of 20th-century Polish art, arms and uniforms, and decorative arts, along with temporary exhibitions.

The Old Synagogue on Szeroka Street in Kazimierz dates from the 15th century and was rebuilt in Renaissance style after a fire in 1557. German forces looted and wrecked it during the Second World War; it was restored in the 1950s. Today it is a branch of the Museum of Kraków with a permanent exhibition on the history and culture of Kraków's Jews.

The Home Army Museum, named after General Emil Fieldorf 'Nil', was founded in 2000 and occupies a 19th-century brick building on Wita Stwosza Street near Kraków's main station. Its permanent exhibition covers the Polish Underground State and its army, the Armia Krajowa, during the Second World War, with weapons, uniforms, documents and items given by veterans.

The Galicia Jewish Museum occupies a former industrial building at Dajwór 18 in Kazimierz, the historic Jewish quarter of Kraków. Opened in 2004, it is built around a photographic exhibition documenting the traces of Jewish life and culture in Polish Galicia and the sites of the Holocaust, and also shows temporary exhibitions.

The Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum shows Polish folk culture in the former town hall of Kazimierz on Plac Wolnica, a Renaissance building with a corner tower. The permanent exhibition presents reconstructed village interiors, regional costumes, crafts, festive customs and folk art; temporary exhibitions are held in the Esterka House on Krakowska Street.

Cricoteka documents the work of Tadeusz Kantor, the painter and theatre director who led the Cricot 2 theatre. Founded in 1980, it has since 2014 occupied a rust-coloured building that spans the former Podgórze power station on the Vistula, with a permanent Kantor exhibition, temporary shows and performances.

The former administration building of Oskar Schindler's enamelware factory at Lipowa 4 in Zabłocie, where he employed Jewish workers from the Kraków ghetto and the Płaszów camp during the German occupation. A branch of the Museum of Kraków, it holds the permanent exhibition on Kraków under Nazi occupation from 1939 to 1945.

The Polish Aviation Museum opened in 1964 on the former Rakowice-Czyżyny airfield in Kraków, established in 1912 and closed to flying in 1963. Aircraft, helicopters and engines are shown in the old hangars, in a main building opened in 2010 and on the open-air field, ranging from early aviation through the Second World War to Cold War jets.