About National Museum in Warsaw
The National Museum in Warsaw (Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie) was founded in 1862 and is Poland's largest museum. The current building — a monumental structure in the Marszałkowska district — was built in the 1920s and 30s and survived the destruction of Warsaw in World War II largely intact. The collections span six millennia of art and material culture from Egypt, Greece, and Rome through medieval Europe to the present.
The museum's most unusual holding is its collection of Nubian Christian art — frescoes from the medieval cathedral at Faras, recovered by a Polish archaeological mission in the 1960s before the site was flooded by the Aswan Dam. These extraordinary 8th–12th century wall paintings are among the most significant Nubian Christian works anywhere in the world. The Polish art collection is the most comprehensive available — spanning Gothic altarpieces, Baroque painting, 19th-century Romanticism, Young Poland, and the postwar Polish avant-garde.
Collections & Highlights
Frequently Asked Questions
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A small ask before you go
You've just explored one of humanity's greatest collections of beauty. Art has the power to move us, inspire us, and change how we see the world. But millions of people will never see beauty like this — not because the art isn't there, but because they can't see at all.
Preventable blindness, caused by conditions like cataracts and trachoma, affects people of all ages across the world's poorest communities. A small gift — for the cost of a museum ticket — can provide a simple surgery to restore someone's sight and transform their life.