Museum of the History of Tarnów and the Region

Your guide to Tarnów's history here is an organ grinder, and the route through the rooms follows a perforated barrel-organ strip packed with curiosities. The Museum of the History of Tarnów and the Region, a branch of the Tarnów Regional Museum, occupies two arcaded Renaissance houses on the north side of the market square — no. 20 from 1565 and no. 21, probably from 1568. The buildings themselves are exhibits: they hide wall paintings from the 16th to the 19th century and an illusionistic staircase topped by a dome with a lantern.

The houses' story: from the Rhodes family to the museum

By the mid-17th century these grand houses, like the whole town, had fallen into ruin. In the 18th century both belonged to the Scottish Rhodes family, and when they were rebuilt after fires they kept their arcades — unlike many buildings on the square. From 1767 to 1788 house no. 21 was owned by Mateusz Morozowicz, postmaster to His Royal Majesty. After the First Partition, when the Austrians entered Tarnów in 1772, the house was requisitioned as quarters for General Ryszard d'Alton, and the house next door also served the army.

In the 19th and 20th centuries successive Jewish owners remodelled the interiors, and the buildings gradually lost their Renaissance character. Reconstruction began during the war: in 1942 the painted decoration of no. 20 was restored, and in 1946–1949 the attics of both houses were rebuilt. No. 20 was handed to the museum in 1949, no. 21 in 1975. The current permanent exhibition opened in 2020.

What to see

• The "Under the Eagle" room with valuable parchment documents and Renaissance wall paintings, entered through a historic stone portal.
• The armoury with medieval swords.
• The cellars, where the exhibition goes back to prehistory and then leads into a guild tavern.
• A tram carriage whose windows look out on old Tarnów, plus rooms on the Second World War and communist Poland.
• The top floor with the town's landmark buildings, its notable figures and traces of its multi-faith past, with the whole story summed up in a "multimedia capsule".

What to look out for

In recent years conservators have uncovered old painted decoration. In the front rooms of both houses you can see grey-and-red coffering on a brown or red ground, and in the western room of no. 21, now the cloakroom, a graphite-and-white diamond pattern. Most interesting is the corner room on the first floor: alongside 16th-century paintings you can see later layers from the first half of the 17th to the mid-18th century, and even 19th-century work. Outside, take a look at the facades and the carved stone window frames.

Tripto tips

The museum is at Rynek 20–21. According to its website it opens Tuesday–Thursday 9:00–15:00, Friday 9:00–17:00, Sunday 10:00–15:00 (10:00–14:00 from October to April), and on Saturdays only from May to September, 10:00–15:00. A standard ticket costs PLN 12, reduced PLN 9, family PLN 28; on Wednesdays the permanent exhibitions are free. If you are staying longer in Tarnów, a PLN 40 pass (reduced PLN 30) covers six of the museum's venues in town for 30 days, including the Town Hall with its Gallery of Old Art (Rynek 1). Allow 1–1.5 hours for the visit.