Muzeum Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław

Muzeum Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego preserves objects and stories from the University of Wrocław, from the fifteenth century to today. In the university’s main building by the Odra, it includes Aula Leopoldina, Oratorium Marianum and the former Mathematical Tower observatory.

Muzeum Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego is the University of Wrocław’s museum, housed in the university’s main building on University Square beside the Odra. Its collections follow the university’s story from the fifteenth century through to the present, turning the building into a record of academic life as well as a setting for it. The museum became an independent university unit on the sixth of August 1992, after growing out of the university archive’s museum-collections department.

The grandest historic room here is Aula Leopoldina, Poland’s only fully preserved secular Baroque interior. Baroque means architecture designed for drama and abundance: here that effect comes from painted illusions across the walls and the sculptural work made by artists from Moravia and Italy. Oratorium Marianum began life as a Jesuit chapel, completed between 1728 and 1741.

When the university was founded in 1811, it became a concert hall instead. The Mathematical Tower preserves another shift in purpose: it was fitted out as an astronomical observatory in 1791 by the Jesuit professor Longinus Anton Jungnitz, including a meridian line marked directly into the floor. The museum also includes exhibition rooms named for Roman Longchamps de Bérier and Stefan Banach.