MuFo Józefitów (Museum of Photography in Krakow)

What to expect

A museum branch with no exhibitions sounds like a mistake. It is in fact the most interesting hour the Museum of Photography in Krakow can offer anyone who has already walked its galleries. Nothing hangs on the walls at Józefitów 16. What you get instead is a guided route through the conservation and digitisation studios and through the climate-controlled stores in the seven-storey block raised on the neighbouring plot during the 2018-2020 rebuild.

The guide works floor by floor and follows a single object: how a photograph enters the collection, how it is catalogued, treated, scanned and finally prepared for display. The second half of the story is the house itself, a 1923 villa where Poland’s first post-war film school ran from 1945 to 1947. Groups are capped at 20 people and there is no minimum age.

The museum publishes no visit length. Allow an hour.

This is the right stop for archivists, conservators, collectors and anyone curious about how institutions work. It is the wrong stop if you came to Krakow to look at photographs; go to MuFo Rakowicka instead. Children are admitted at any age, but the standard tour is not built for them; family workshops are held here only as separately announced events.

Tips

• Book an English tour five days ahead, or you will get a Polish one. Standard tours run in Polish. An English-language tour has to be requested in advance by e-mail to edukacja@mufo.pl , at the latest five days before your visit. This is the single most important line on this page for a foreign visitor.
• Come in the morning, not in the evening. The Monday to Wednesday slots at 10:00, 11:00 and 12:00 fall inside working hours, so the studios are staffed and you see work in progress. At the 18:00 slot the same rooms stand empty, which is the main complaint in the one published visitor account of this tour.
• Tuesday is the cheap double. Take the 10:00 or 11:00 tour here, then ride across town to MuFo Rakowicka, where the main exhibition is free on Tuesdays and the doors open at 11:00. Two branches of the same institution for the 18 PLN you paid here.
• Monday is the day this address wins. MuFo Rakowicka , the National Museum’s Main Building and Mehoffer House are all closed on Mondays. Józefitów runs three tours that morning.
• Saturday needs booking three days ahead. One tour only, at 11:00, requested at edukacja@mufo.pl at least three days before the date. The museum publishes no Sunday tours at all.
• 18 PLN standard, 14 PLN reduced, and no free day. The free Tuesday covers the main exhibition at MuFo Rakowicka and does not extend to this branch. Buy at the door or in advance at bilety.mufo.krakow.pl.
• There is no walk-in. The building works 9:00-13:00 Monday to Wednesday and 15:00-19:00 Thursday to Friday, but outside tour times it is offices, workrooms and stores, and you will not get past the door.
• Accessibility: phone first. According to the museum there is a ramp to the left of the entrance, a lift between floors, adapted toilets on levels 0 and +1, and portable induction loops to borrow. Accessibility questions go to mufodostepne@mufo.pl or +48 572 181 346 (call or text). Call +48 12 395 70 42, extension 1226, before you travel.

Getting there

Tram: lines 4, 8, 13, 14 and 24 to the Plac Inwalidów stop, then about five minutes on foot along ul. Józefitów. From the Main Market Square the whole trip takes around 15 minutes.

Bus: the same stop is served by lines 139, 159, 164, 169, 179, 189, 469, 501, 503 and 511, among others.

On foot: roughly 20 minutes from the Main Market Square, out through plac Szczepański and along ul. Karmelicka.

By car: this part of Krowodrza is a paid parking zone and ul. Józefitów is narrow and fully parked. With a fixed tour time you cannot afford to circle for a space; take the tram.

Nearby

The obvious pairing is MuFo Rakowicka on the other side of the centre - the same institution, but with the exhibitions. Order matters: see the galleries first and the backstage tour then makes sense of them. Ten minutes’ walk down ul. Krupnicza, Mehoffer House is a small artist’s home and a complete change of register after an hour of technical talk.

A quarter of an hour the other way lies the National Museum’s Main Building , with its galleries of 20th and 21st century Polish art. The walk goes through Krakowski Park and along the edge of the Błonia meadow.

Background

The villa at Józefitów 16 was designed in 1923 by the engineer Rudolf Hand, built between 1923 and 1925, and entered in the heritage register in 1996 under number A-1029. During the German occupation it housed an agency of the Reich propaganda office. When that agency was wound up in 1945, some 300 feature films and at least 100 short films were found in the building, along with stock, cameras and lamps.

That windfall of equipment decided the next two years. From 1945 to 1947 the villa housed the Prafilmówka Krakowska, treated in Poland as the start of state film education after the war. Antoni Bohdziewicz, Stanisław Wohl and Tadeusz Makarczyński taught there, and among those who began their careers in the building were the directors Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Wojciech Jerzy Has and Jerzy Passendorfer, and the cinematographer Mieczysław Jahoda.

The Museum of the History of Photography moved in during July 1992, and for nearly three decades this was its main address. That changed with the 2018-2020 rebuild and the opening of the new seat on ul. Rakowicka on 4 December 2021. Józefitów is now the institution’s working core - inventory, studios and stores - which the public enters a few times a day, always with a guide.