The Commonwealth: From the Union of Lublin to the European Union - Tenth Pavilion, Warsaw Citadel

“Rzeczpospolita. Od Unii Lubelskiej do Unii Europejskiej” (The Commonwealth: From the Union of Lublin to the European Union) is a temporary exhibition of the Museum of the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel on the idea of European unity. The museum points to the Union of Lublin as an important historical example of this idea. It runs 10 November 2026 - 10 January 2027 in the Galeria Brama Bielańska (Bielany Gate Gallery).

The Museum of the Tenth Pavilion on the exhibition (our translation):

The exhibition will be devoted to the idea of European unity, of which the Union of Lublin was an important historical example. The exhibition will show the road from the Polish-Lithuanian community to present-day European integration.

What to expect

The exhibition’s title sets two unions side by side: the union of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, concluded in 1569, and today’s European Union. The two unions thus mark the beginning and the end of the exhibition’s story.

The first word of the title is also part of the name of the state that grew out of the Union of Lublin: historians call it the Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, the Commonwealth of Both Nations.

Context

The Union of Lublin was an agreement between the estates of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, concluded on 1 July 1569 at the general sejm in Lublin. The Polish Wikipedia describes it as a real union, unlike the earlier unions, which joined the two states only through the person of the ruler.

The union created the state that historians call the Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, known in English as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It had a common monarch, coat of arms, sejm and currency, as well as a common foreign and defence policy. The English Wikipedia adds that it was one of the largest countries in Europe at the time.

Tickets and time

• Where: in the Galeria Brama Bielańska; it is a temporary exhibition of the Museum of the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel. Directions are on the museum profile.
• When: the exhibition runs 10 November 2026 - 10 January 2027. The museum set the vernissage for 10 November 2026 and announced it in its November programme.
• At the same museum: throughout the exhibition’s run, the exhibition “Henryk Guterman (1913-1938) - zabity talent” (Henryk Guterman (1913-1938): A Talent Killed) can also be seen in the Gallery of Historical Painting (Galeria Malarstwa Historycznego), and in November the exhibition “Na podbój kosmosu” (The Conquest of Space) in the Poster Gallery (Galeria Plakatu).
• Who it’s for: people interested in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and of European integration, and those who want to look at the European Union through the lens of the old Polish-Lithuanian community.

See also

• Museum of the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel - the profile of the museum in whose Galeria Brama Bielańska the exhibition runs.
• Henryk Guterman (1913-1938): A Talent Killed - drawings by a painter killed in the Spanish Civil War, from the collections of the Museum of Independence.
• The Conquest of Space - posters from the collections of the Museum of Independence on the space race.

Museum profile: Museum of the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel.