Princes Czartoryski Library

What to expect

Nothing, for now - and that is the useful answer. The building at św. Marka 17 has been out of use since 1 June 2024 while the branch is expanded and rebuilt, and the National Museum in Krakow says it will be available again at the beginning of 2028. Delete it from this trip. If you came to Krakow for the Czartoryski treasures, the address you want is the Czartoryski Museum on Pijarska street, five minutes away, where Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine hangs. The library and the museum are two separate branches of the same institution and the confusion is common enough to be worth stating plainly.

The second thing to know is that this was never a place you toured. The Princes Czartoryski Library is a research library with no permanent exhibition: over 231,000 volumes plus an archive of more than 14,000 manuscripts running from the Middle Ages to the present, consulted in a reading room by museum staff, scholars, students and exhibition curators. Its holdings carry real weight - the Koszyce Privilege of 1374, the act of the Prussian Homage of 1525, the 11th-century Golden Codex of Pułtusk, the pontifical of Bishop Erazm Ciołek, King René’s Tournament Book - but they surface in temporary exhibitions or on screen, never in a display case you could walk past.

Nor is the building the palace the name suggests. It was put up specifically for the collection in 1958-1960 to a design by Marian Jaroszewski, on the site of a destroyed annexe of the Wodzicki Palace: five floors above ground, two below, plainly functional.

Best for: researchers planning a query, with the caveat that for the next few years a query means microfilm or a scan; and manuscript enthusiasts happy to work through the digital catalogue from home. A visitor with one day in Krakow should spend it elsewhere - and this page tells you where.

Tips

• Access to the collections is suspended until further notice. The reason is not only the building work but the conservation and anoxia schedule - anoxia being oxygen-free pest treatment of the volumes. There is no exception to negotiate.
• The collections are not in the building. Regional outlet LoveKraków reports that close to 250,000 objects were moved out to other National Museum branches and to Spytkowice Castle. That is why the refusal is absolute rather than a matter of asking nicely.
• Microfilm is the one channel still working. The library supplies microfilms through interlibrary loan, with a turnaround of up to four weeks, ordered through your own home library rather than direct.
• Start with the catalogue, not the phone. The online catalogue is at opac-bcz.mnk.pl; digitised manuscripts and prints are at cyfrowe.mnk.pl and zbiory.mnk.pl. Have a shelfmark before you write to anyone.
• Contact for collection enquiries: bczart@mnk.pl , +48 12 370 54 20 or +48 12 370 54 21. A substantive answer about a specific manuscript comes from the department, not from the museum’s front desk.
• Language: the museum runs English versions of its branch and catalogue pages, but the holdings themselves are overwhelmingly Polish, Latin and French, and so are most catalogue records. Expect to read the sources, not an English summary of them.
• Wheelchair users: before the works the branch was not accessible - a narrow internal lift reached by several steps from the entrance. Full adaptation for people with special needs is part of the rebuild, so the situation after 2028 should be different.
• Do not plan around the 2027 date in the press. Reports mention the library reopening in 2027 with the project closing in the first quarter of 2028; the museum’s own page says the beginning of 2028. Until an official announcement says otherwise, use the museum’s date.

Getting there

On foot from Rynek Główny: about five minutes up Floriańska or Sławkowska street into the northern edge of the Old Town. From Kraków Główny station: roughly ten minutes through the Planty park. By tram: Teatr Słowackiego or Stary Kleparz, a few minutes’ walk from either. Note: the entrance has been closed since 1 June 2024, so the route is worth knowing only as the approach to the neighbouring branches.

Nearby

The Czartoryski Museum on Pijarska street is the other half of the same collection and the only place to see it in person, Lady with an Ermine included; allow 90 minutes. The Arsenal - Gallery of Ancient Art occupies the former municipal arsenal, the building where Władysław Czartoryski reassembled the scattered collection in 1874 - the starting point for everything that later moved to św. Marka. The Szołayski House on plac Szczepański is a third National Museum branch within a few minutes’ walk and the easiest way to refill the slot the closed library leaves in an itinerary.

Background

Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and Izabela Czartoryska began collecting in the second half of the 18th century; the first catalogue, in 1770, listed 1,645 prints and manuscripts, kept at the Blue Palace in Warsaw. After 1783 the library moved to Puławy, reaching some 70,000 prints and 3,000 manuscripts by 1830 and absorbing material from the archive of King Stanisław August Poniatowski. The failed November Uprising scattered the holdings across Sieniawa, Krasiczyn, Kórnik, Krakow and Paris. Władysław Czartoryski reunited them in Krakow in 1874 in the former municipal arsenal, and the museum with its library opened in 1876. The purpose-built home on św. Marka came only in 1958-1960, with the move completed in 1961. On 29 December 2016 the Princes Czartoryski Foundation transferred the collection to the National Museum in Krakow.