Podlasie Museum in Białystok (Town Hall)

Białystok's town hall was never home to the city authorities – from the start it was a market hall full of stalls. In 1940 the Soviet authorities demolished it to make room for a statue of Stalin, and today's building is a post-war reconstruction which has housed the Podlasie Museum since 1958. Inside is a gallery of more than 120 paintings by Polish artists from the last 250 years – from Bacciarelli to Boznańska, Malczewski and Witkacy.

History: a town hall that was a market

The town hall was funded by Jan Klemens Branicki, the magnate who shaped 18th-century Białystok, as the architectural centrepiece of the new market square. In 1745 a single-storey square building with ten shops went up; in 1755 Jewish merchants paid for four corner pavilions, known as alkierze, and in 1761 a tower was added, raised to its present height in 1798. The result was a town hall with corner pavilions, a type rarely found in Poland. In 1772 it held 48 stalls, the tower housed a courtroom and a jail, and by 1922 more than 100 small shops were trading here.

After the demolition in 1940, the town hall was missing for more than a decade. Reconstruction began in 1953 to a design by Zofia Chojnacka and was completed in 1958, with the building going straight to the museum. The rebuild added cellars and linked the pavilions to the central block with connectors where the old arcades had been. The institution itself was founded in 1949 as the city's first ever regional museum, and has been called the Podlasie Museum since 2000.

What to see

• The Gallery of Polish Painting – a permanent display of more than 120 works, from the late 18th century to the early decades of the 20th.
• Paintings linked to the Branicki court, and portraits by Bacciarelli, Lampi, Grassi and Michałowski.
• Painters of the Munich school, including the highlight of the collection – Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski's "Departure by Carriage".
• Works by Boznańska, Malczewski, Wyspiański, Fałat and Stanisławski, plus canvases by Witkacy.
• Temporary exhibitions, and the town hall itself, with its four corner pavilions on Kościuszko Market Square.

Interesting facts

The tower clock was installed in 1868, and around 1898 a metal gallery was fitted round the spire so that the Białystok Volunteer Fire Brigade could watch for fires. The Podlasie Museum is now the largest museum in the region – besides the town hall it runs the museum in the former synagogue in Tykocin, the Icon Museum in Supraśl and the Museum of Palace Interiors in Choroszcz, among others.

Tripto tip

The town hall stands at Rynek Kościuszki 10, in the very centre of Białystok. From 1 October to 30 April it is open Tuesday to Sunday 10:00–17:00, and from 1 May to 30 September 10:00–18:00; it is closed on Mondays and some public holidays, and last entry is one hour before closing. A standard ticket costs PLN 14, a reduced one PLN 7 and a family ticket PLN 28, and on Wednesdays entry to the permanent exhibitions is free. Allow about an hour for the gallery. Afterwards, walk a few minutes to the Branicki Palace – home of the town hall's founder – and its gardens.