Courtyard and sacred art at Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace

A reason to pause here

The courtyard is what our photographs keep coming back to. Before visiting the art collections, we would look at the arcades and the way the old house opens behind its street frontage.

A bishop’s house turned museum

Bishop Erazm Ciołek, a diplomat and patron of the arts, funded this Gothic and Renaissance residence early in the sixteenth century. It now houses a branch of the National Museum in Kraków.

The collections include old Polish art and Orthodox art from the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The early-fifteenth-century Madonna of Krużlowa and Veit Stoss’s stone Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane are works we would plan to see. Check which galleries are open for your visit.

Start with the courtyard

Our photographs stay with the palace’s arcades, paving and windows. We like the way the street frontage gives little warning of the space behind it. Take a moment in the courtyard before the collections, then look at how the museum rooms fit inside this older residence.

Plan the visit

The palace is on Kanonicza Street near Wawel. Use the National Museum’s current visitor information for tickets, temporary closures and accessibility. The courtyard visit and exhibition admission may have different arrangements. Avoid planning several large museum visits back to back if you want time to read the object labels.