Kossakówka

What to expect

The headline first, because it settles your day: you cannot go in. The branch page carries one line where the opening hours should be: the branch is temporarily closed. Work on the exhibition is under way, and the museum states that the Kossak house and garden are not available for visits. The Museum of Krakow says autumn 2027. Until then this is a facade seen from the square, not a museum, and it should not take more than five minutes of a walk along the Vistula.

Here is why it is worth putting in the 2027 notebook. Juliusz Kossak rented the Neo-Gothic manor in 1869 and bought it, garden included, two years later. His son Wojciech took over the studio, then Wojciech’s son Jerzy - three consecutive generations of painters known across Poland for horses and battle scenes. Wojciech’s daughters grew up in the same rooms: Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, one of the best-read Polish poets of the interwar years, and Magdalena Samozwaniec, a satirist who made a career out of the family myth. Henryk Sienkiewicz and Ignacy Jan Paderewski were among the guests. A private house that ran as a literary salon for half a century - that is the subject of the future exhibition.

The building nearly did not survive it. It decayed for decades until MOCAK, the city’s contemporary art museum, bought it in December 2019. Conservation work ran from October 2023 to December 2025, and on 12 May 2026 the Mayor of Krakow unveiled a plaque in the garden marking the end of the project. Every local outlet covered the ceremony, which is exactly how the misunderstanding starts: it closed the building site, it did not open a museum.

One expectation to drop before you ever get there. The director of the Museum of Krakow has said plainly that there is not a single wall in the house where one of the famous canvases could hang. This will be a house about a family - mementos, small-format work, rooms - rather than a picture gallery, and it will cover the women of the line too, Simona Kossak among them. Best for readers who collect artists’ houses and expect to return to Krakow after 2027. If you are in the city this week, the same pleasure is three blocks away.

Tips

• Do not plan a visit before autumn 2027. That is the date on the branch page. The museum’s own news item and the May 2026 press coverage both say end of 2027, so treat any date as provisional rather than booked.
• Ignore headlines about an opening. The plaque unveiled on 12 May 2026 marked the end of the restoration. The house stays shut, and so does the garden.
• Check with the branch, not with the press. Phone +48 512 648 022 or +48 510 429 483, e-mail kossakowka@muzeumkrakowa.pl . The branch already has a head, Maria Lempart, so the question reaches someone who knows.
• The museum publishes no accessibility information - call before visiting.
• There is no ticket price yet. The museum publishes no prices and no free day for this address, and the rules that apply at open Museum of Krakow branches do not automatically carry over here.
• Allow 45-60 minutes once it opens. The house is roughly 350 m2. Expect a compact house-museum, not an afternoon.
• Five minutes if you are passing anyway. The exterior and the square are visible at any hour, free, on the riverside walk from Wawel towards Dębnicki bridge.
• No cafe in the garden yet. MOCAK has proposed a garden pavilion with a literary cafe, but says it depends on zoning decisions. No date has been given.
• Labels and tours are an unknown. With no exhibition installed, nothing is published about label languages or guided tours in English. Ask when you write.

Getting there

On foot from the Main Market Square: about ten minutes via Franciszkańska and Zwierzyniecka streets. Plac Juliusza Kossaka sits on the western edge of the Old Town district, between Zwierzyniecka and Retoryka, a few steps from the Vistula embankment.

Tram: the nearest stops are Jubilat and Filharmonia, served by lines running along Zwierzyniecka street and the Trzech Wieszczów avenues. Both are a few minutes’ walk away.

Along the river from Wawel: follow the boulevard towards Dębnicki bridge and it delivers you to the square. This is the pleasant approach and takes about fifteen minutes.

By car: the area is inside the paid parking zone and kerb space by the square is thin. The closest underground car park is at plac Na Groblach.

Nearby

While Kossakówka is shut, the Józef Mehoffer House on Krupnicza street does the job it promises: a painter’s preserved apartment and his garden, open now. A few minutes further, the Stanisław Wyspiański Museum holds the largest collection of work by the artist who dominated the same Krakow circle the Kossaks entertained. Inside the Planty ring, Collegium Maius , the oldest building of the Jagiellonian University, offers a very different interior and a collection of historic scientific instruments. Unlike Kossakówka, you can walk into it today, on a timed entry.

Background

The manor went up in 1851 to a design by Jan Bogumił Trenner, built for W. Kołodziejkowski and first known as “Wygoda”. The Kossaks arrived as tenants in 1869; Juliusz bought the house and garden in 1871 and Wojciech inherited it in 1884. For decades it worked as an open house for Krakow’s artistic and intellectual circles. Demolition threatened after the Second World War and was fought off by Jerzy Kossak’s widow; the building entered the heritage register in 1960 and then spent decades falling apart. MOCAK bought the property in December 2019 and added an adjoining plot in 2020. The house and its 16-are garden were restored between 2023 and 2025 with support from the Social Committee for the Restoration of Krakow’s Monuments. Which institution should run the finished house was argued over by city councillors; the Museum of Krakow won the exhibition.