"Muszyna State" Regional Museum

The "Muszyna State" Regional Museum began in 1958 with keepsakes that local people brought to an old inn below the castle hill. Today it occupies a rebuilt copy of a former 18th-century inn at Krzywa 1 and tells the story of the bishops' "state" that for centuries covered Muszyna, Tylicz and the surrounding villages. Its collection includes a 16th-century loom built without a single nail and the lantern of a night watchman who sounded the hours on a horn.

What was the "Muszyna State"?

This was the name for a group of estates in the Sącz region owned by the bishops of Kraków, with Muszyna as its administrative centre. Sources also call it the Muszyna borderland, the Muszyna starosty or simply the "Bishop's Land". The museum presents the history of this enclave and its people – governors and townspeople as well as the Lemko and Jewish communities who helped shape the region.

The museum's story

The idea came up in 1956 in the local branch of the PTTK tourist society, and on 3 August 1958, thanks to Karol Rojna, the "Museum of Muszyna Souvenirs" opened in the inn on Antoniego Kity Street. By the end of the 1990s it had gathered about 2,500 objects, bought from or donated by people from Muszyna and nearby. Because of a new bypass and the building's poor condition, the inn was taken down to its foundations in November 2009 and reconstructed at Krzywa 1. From 2010 the museum was run by the municipal culture centre, and since 2024 it has been part of the Muszyna Culture and Reading Centre.

What to see

• Three rooms: a Lemko room, a burgher's room and a knights' room.
• A gallery of self-taught art led by works by the naive painter Nikifor, alongside pieces by Władysław Chajec, Aleksander Jurkiewicz and Kazimierz Kwiatkowski.
• Some of the earliest exhibits: a reproduction of a drawing by Jan Matejko, who sketched the wooden houses of the market square during a stay in Muszyna, photographs of folk costumes, the nail-free loom and the watchman's lantern.
• Militaria, burghers' chests and Judaica.

Tripto tip

The same building houses the tourist information centre, so it is a good first stop in Muszyna – ask here about current opening times and trails. The conference room hosts museum workshops, chamber concerts and exhibition openings. Allow 45–60 minutes for the displays. Above the town rises a medieval castle, partly reconstructed over more than three years at a cost of over PLN 13 million; the climb up the hill is not the easiest.