Muzeum Pana Tadeusza, Wrocław

Muzeum Pana Tadeusza, part of the Ossolineum, occupies the Pod Złotym Słońcem townhouse on Wrocław’s Market Square. Its core exhibit is Adam Mickiewicz’s only surviving manuscript of Pan Tadeusz. A second permanent exhibition follows Jan Nowak-Jeziorański and Władysław Bartoszewski through war and postwar Poland.

Muzeum Pana Tadeusza occupies the townhouse called Pod Złotym Słońcem, at Rynek 6. Open since 2016 as part of the Ossolineum, it is built around an extraordinary object: Adam Mickiewicz’s only surviving manuscript of Pan Tadeusz. This is not simply a display of a celebrated poem.

The museum places that manuscript among hundreds of original papers, early printed books, artworks and everyday objects, tracing how the epic was written and how generations of readers received it. Its second permanent exhibition, Mission: Poland, carries the Romantic language of freedom into the Second World War and the years that followed. Through the lives of Jan Nowak-Jeziorański and Władysław Bartoszewski, you meet a generation raised in an independent Poland after one hundred and twenty-three years of partitions, then forced in 1939 to fight again for its country’s independence and place in Europe.

Both men entrusted Ossolineum with archives, art and personal materials connected to their lives. The museum received a jury commendation in the European Museum of the Year Award in 2019.