Hipolit House

What to expect

The headline decides your day: Hipolit House in Kraków is open again Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00-17:00, but the permanent exhibition “Mieszczański dom” (The Burgher House) remains closed. From 7 to 30 October 2026 the house shows the temporary exhibition “Przedmiot wyobrażony” (standard ticket 22 PLN, reduced 18 PLN, family 44 PLN). The Museum of Krakow announces that the branch will be closed on 1 and 11 November.

Until 30 October the rooms open to you hold contemporary art made in answer to the house’s own belongings. Artists, students and graduates of the Intermedia Faculty at Kraków’s Academy of Fine Arts took everyday objects from the branch’s collection as their starting point. It is the second show in “Kamienica otwarta” (Open House), a series the museum and the Academy launched here in October 2025 with a free exhibition about home life. The museum does not say which rooms the show occupies.

What made the house’s name is still shut. “Mieszczański dom” fills a dozen or so furnished rooms over two floors with the way wealthier Cracovians lived from the 17th to the 19th century. The collector’s room, packed with paintings, clocks and curiosities, is what visitors used to talk about. It has been closed since April 2023 and no return date has been announced.

The building itself stays the main exhibit, and the looking starts out on the square, free and at any hour. Up on the facade are fragments of early 17th-century sgraffito, uncovered by conservators in 2016, with figures read as St Helena and St Sigismund beneath an attic crowned with an Eye of Providence relief.

Step inside and the centuries peel back. Wooden galleries run round the courtyard; indoors there is Baltazar Fontana’s Baroque stucco, a frieze below the ceiling, a Renaissance inter-window column and wall painting. Oldest of all are the 14th-century cellars and stone portals.

Best for: this October, visitors curious about contemporary art that talks back to everyday history, and anyone who wants to get inside a 14th-century house on Mariacki Square before the period rooms return. If a furnished burgher interior is what you came to Kraków for, this visit will not deliver it; the Matejko House and the Pharmacy Museum, five minutes’ walk away, will. No visit length is given for the temporary show, but it slots easily between other stops.

Tips

• Time your visit for a curator’s tour. The curators walk visitors through “Przedmiot wyobrażony” on 14 and 21 October at 16:00, and a workshop in creative looking runs on 11 October at 11:00. A show built on artists’ readings of old objects gains a lot when the people behind it explain them.
• After 30 October, check first. The branch page lists no other exhibition yet and the museum has given no date for the period rooms. If you plan a November visit, phone +48 12 422 21 18 or e-mail hipolitow@muzeumkrakowa.pl beforehand.
• The facade is free. The sgraffito, the Renaissance portal and the attic are visible from the square at any hour and cost nothing - two minutes on your way round St Mary’s Basilica.
• Allow 45 to 60 minutes once the permanent exhibition returns. That is an unhurried pass through both floors. With a guide, or if the collector’s room holds you, it runs past the hour.
• For the period rooms, avoid sunny afternoons. Visitors found that glare off the glazed paintings made details impossible to see with the naked eye. Once the permanent exhibition is back, come in the morning or on an overcast day.
• English on site is not documented. The museum states nothing about label languages or audio guides for this branch; ask at the desk or when you contact the branch.
• No coach access. Plac Mariacki is a pedestrian zone with no coach bay - groups are dropped at the Planty ring and walk in.

Getting there

On foot from the Main Market Square: one to two minutes. Plac Mariacki is the small square on the east side of St Mary’s Basilica, behind the chancel; the house is number 3.

Tram: the nearest stops are on the Planty ring - Teatr Słowackiego, Poczta Główna, Plac Wszystkich Świętych. Each is a 6 to 8 minute walk through the park and the Old Town grid.

From Kraków Główny station: about ten minutes on foot along Floriańska street through the Florian Gate, or along Szpitalna past the Słowacki Theatre.

By car: the whole area inside the Planty is a restricted-traffic zone and there is no parking on plac Mariacki. The nearest underground car parks are at plac Na Groblach and under plac Szczepański.

Nearby

While the permanent exhibition stays closed, the Matejko House on Floriańska is the closest substitute: the painter’s flat and studio kept with their furnishings, five minutes away. A few doors further on, the Pharmacy Museum fills twelve rooms across three floors of another Old Town townhouse and offers the same pleasure of walking through period interiors. Across the Main Square, Krzysztofory Palace , the main seat of the Museum of Krakow, has taken over the job of telling the city’s story.

Background

The house takes its name from the Hipolit family, merchants who owned it in the 17th century; it later passed to the Zaleski family and changed hands repeatedly. It entered the heritage register on 27 April 1931. The Museum of Krakow opened the branch in 2003 with the permanent exhibition “Mieszczański dom”, a reconstruction of how wealthier Cracovians furnished and used their homes from the 17th to the 19th century.

Conservation closed the permanent exhibition in the first weekend of April 2023: new wiring, conservation of the furniture, textiles and decorative crafts, new lighting and new security for the building. Since then the doors have opened only for temporary shows. “Siłaczki”, about the women of Kraków (26 September 2024 to 16 March 2025), used the entrance hall, both upper floors and the cellars. In October 2025 the museum and the Academy of Fine Arts’ Intermedia Faculty staged the first “Kamienica otwarta” here.

By autumn 2026 the branch has regular opening days again, while “Mieszczański dom” stays closed. The ambitions reach beyond bringing the old rooms back. The Academy describes a future house that also researches fashion and Kraków’s culinary past, and local press reported in 2023 on plans for new rooms about kitchens and table manners. None of these announcements carries a date.