Old Medical Books Department of the Main Medical Library

What to expect

A red-brick building at Jazdów 1A - a surviving surgical pavilion of the Ujazdowski Hospital, built 1894-1896. Of the original complex of 58 buildings, only five survived - the rest were demolished in the 1970s to make way for the Łazienki Route highway. Inside sits the Old Medical Books Department of the Main Medical Library (GBL), named after Stanisław Konopka, holding over 65,000 exhibits that the Minister of Health officially recognised in 2011 as worthy of forming a separate National Museum of Medical Sciences. The museum was never created, but the collection is very much there.

These are not just books. The holdings include original works by Copernicus, Maria Skłodowska-Curie’s desk, hand-painted herbals, 17th-century anatomical atlases, daguerreotypes, paintings by Witkacy, letters by Sienkiewicz and Kraszewski, documents of General Haller, and the complete archive of the Warsaw-Białystok Medical Chamber with unique personal files of physicians. A separate permanent exhibition tells the story of the Maltese Hospital in Warsaw.

GBL was founded by Prof. Stanisław Konopka in 1945. He personally collected war-dispersed medical collections from across Poland - Glucholazy, Szczecin, Legnica, Polczyn. The result: Poland’s largest collection of medical history, listed in Dorota Folga-Januszewska’s guidebook “Muzea Warszawy.”

Tips

• Access to collections requires permission from the GBL Director. You must provide your name, workplace and purpose of visit. This is a research archive, not an open museum.
• Night of Museums (May) - the only annual opportunity to visit without formalities. In 2026, GBL is preparing a “cabinet of curiosities” featuring anatomical albums from 1901-1904 and the 1671 old print “Miscellanea Curiosa.”
• Reading room: Monday-Friday 9:00-15:00. Arrive no later than 30 minutes before closing.
• Contact: (22) 622 50 05, 573 955 930, sk-med@gbl.waw.pl.
• The Central Catalogue of Old Medical Books is available online at ckdkm.gbl.waw.pl.
• Accessibility: the department is housed in a surviving 1894-1896 surgical pavilion of the former Ujazdowski Hospital, and the operator has not confirmed step-free access - which is why wheelchair, stroller and elevator are all marked unavailable.

Getting there

Bus: Rozbrat stop (lines 108, 118, 162, 166, 411) - 5 minutes walk.

On foot from Łazienki: 10 minutes from the park entrance on ul. Agrykoli.

Tram: Al. Ujazdowskie / Plac Trzech Krzyży (trams 4, 15, 18, 35, 36) - 10 minutes on foot.

In the neighbourhood

Royal Łazienki (1 ul. Agrykola, 600 m) - Palace on the Isle, Orangery, Old Greenhouse. Museum of Hunting and Horsemanship (9 ul. Szwoleżerów, 300 m) - in the historic Cavalry Cadets School building.