Dom Jana Matejki, Kraków

Dom Jana Matejki occupies the Kraków townhouse where the painter lived after taking ownership in 1871. The museum preserves rooms associated with his life, including his birthplace and studio, while the building itself records centuries of alteration. It became a public museum in 1896 and is part of the National Museum in Kraków.

Dom Jana Matejki is the museum created in the Kraków home of the Polish painter Jan Matejko. This townhouse at Floriańska 41 began as a single-storey building in the sixteenth century; later owners added its second floor in the eighteenth century and a mansard-topped third in the nineteenth. Matejko took sole possession in 1871 after settling with his siblings, then commissioned a two-year remodelling and moved in with his family.

The painter’s death in 1893 immediately turned this private address into a public cause. The next day, an appeal called for a museum here, and the Jan Matejko Society raised the money to buy the house and part of its contents in 1895. Visitors first entered its drawing room and main bedroom in May 1896.

Inside, the second-floor room where Matejko was born on the twenty-fourth of June 1838 bears a commemorative plaque. His studio survives on the third floor, which was added at his own request in 1872 and 1873. During the Second World War, with the museum closed, works by Matejko were concealed here to keep them from Nazi seizure. Since 1904, this house museum has belonged to the National Museum in Kraków.