Four Domes Pavilion - Museum of Contemporary Art

What to expect

The Four Domes Pavilion in Wroclaw is the place for Polish art of the second half of the 20th century and of the 21st century: since 2016 it has housed the Museum of Contemporary Art, a branch of the National Museum in Wroclaw. The building alone is worth the visit: it is a modernist work by Hans Poelzig, restored in 2013-2015, standing right next to the Centennial Hall (Hala Stulecia).

The building has two wings. The east wing, set around an inner courtyard, holds the permanent exhibition “Kolekcja sztuki polskiej II połowy XX i XXI wieku” (Collection of Polish Art of the Second Half of the 20th and the 21st Century), while the west wing is used for temporary exhibitions. The renovation created more than six thousand square metres of space for contemporary art here.

The museum presents its selection as an attempt to show the diversity of Polish modern and contemporary art, so this is a survey of many currents rather than a monograph of one artist. Radio Wrocław, looking back on the museum’s ten years in June 2026, mentions “such names as Abakanowicz, Althamer, Nowosielski, Witkacy, Makowski and Hałas”.

Visitors rate the pavilion highly: on Google Maps it has 4.6 out of 5 from 2948 reviews (read on 25 October 2026).

Who it suits: anyone who wants to see Polish post-war and contemporary art in one place, and visitors coming to the Centennial Hall complex, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The pavilion stands on the same grounds, so the two visits are easy to combine.

For visitors with disabilities the pavilion is easier to get around than the main building of the same museum, which declares only partial accessibility. Here the space is all on one level, a platform lift gives access to the entrance, and the educators run workshops with audio description and guided tours in Polish Sign Language (PJM).

Who should skip it: anyone looking for art older than the second half of the 20th century, especially Silesian art. That is shown in the main building of the National Museum, whose collections are mainly painting and sculpture with an emphasis on the art of Silesia.

How long: allow about two hours for the permanent exhibition in the east wing alone, and more if you add a temporary exhibition in the west wing. The cafe and the courtyard are open without a ticket, so you can take a break without leaving the building.

Tips

• Tuesday for the permanent exhibition. For the permanent exhibition there is free admission on Tuesdays. This applies to the permanent exhibition only; for the temporary exhibitions and the combined ticket the museum has a separate price list on its website. A ticket to the permanent exhibition on other days: standard ticket 20 PLN (about 5 EUR), reduced 15 PLN (about 3 EUR).
• A ticket from the Racławice Panorama. If you have visited the Racławice Panorama (Panorama Racławicka), its ticket gets you into the pavilion’s permanent exhibition for three months from that visit. The same ticket opens the permanent exhibitions of the main building of the National Museum and of the Ethnographic Museum. For frequent visitors there is also a personal annual ticket to all exhibitions in these three places.
• Pupils, students, families. Pupils and students up to the age of 26 have a special ticket to the permanent exhibition, children up to the age of 7 get a free ticket, and the museum also sells a family ticket priced per person. The prices of these tickets are in the price list on the museum’s website.
• Last Saturday of the month. In the evening there is a 45-minute multimedia show, “Zobacz, usłysz, dotknij” (See, Hear, Touch), with a separate ticket bought at the museum ticket office; places are limited, and the museum asks visitors to arrive a quarter of an hour before the start. On that day ticket sales for the permanent exhibition end earlier than usual, and the exhibition itself closes before the show.
• Ticket office and closing days. The ticket office stops selling tickets before the museum closes, so do not plan to arrive at the last minute. Around the holidays the pavilion has days when it is closed; the practical information box lists them.
• Audio guide with your own headphones. You can borrow the audio guide to the collection exhibition at no charge, but only with your own headphones, so bring them from home. You can book a guided tour in Polish, English or German, paid separately, on top of the tickets.
• Accessibility. Paths for blind and partially sighted visitors lead from the entrance, and at the entrance there is a tactile and voice map. Assistance dogs are allowed, the ticket desk has an induction loop, noise-cancelling headphones can be borrowed at the cloakroom, and people on the autism spectrum can use a quiet space.
• Courtyard and cafe without a ticket. You can enter the pavilion’s courtyard without a ticket, and the cafe is open during museum hours and does not require a ticket either. It is a good place for a break between the pavilion and the Centennial Hall.

Getting there

• Address: ul. Wystawowa 1, 51-618 Wrocław, on the exhibition grounds in the eastern part of the city, next to the Centennial Hall.
• Tram: according to the Wroclaw public transport timetable (the city’s GTFS data), the nearest stop is “Mickiewicza” (about 161 m), served by line 17. Trams 1, 2, 4, 10 and 19 call at the “Hala Stulecia” stop (about 190 m); the same lines stop at “ZOO” (about 287 m).
• Bus: lines 145, 146, 151, 315 and 345 and night lines 253 and 255 call at the “Hala Stulecia” stop, and lines 115, 345, 945 and 955 at the “Mickiewicza” stop.
• By car: the museum directs visitors to the paid car park at the Centennial Hall.

Background

The building in which you see contemporary art today has served exhibitions from the start. According to culture.pl, it is the second largest building, after the Centennial Hall, of the exhibition grounds laid out for the Centennial Exhibition of 1913. It was designed by Hans Poelzig and built by the firm Schlesische Beton Baugesellschaft between August 1912 and February 1913.

Until 1945 the pavilion housed temporary art exhibitions, in 1948 it was one of the venues of the Recovered Territories Exhibition (Wystawa Ziem Odzyskanych), and from 1953 it was home to the Wroclaw Feature Film Studio (Wytwórnia Filmów Fabularnych).

In 2009 the building was taken over by the National Museum in Wroclaw, and in 2013-2015 it was restored. Even before the opening, in January 2016, local residents were shown an exhibition of paintings by Michael Willmann there, and Radio Wrocław wrote that the pavilion impressed them. The Museum of Contemporary Art opened on 25 June 2016. Since 2006 the neighbouring Centennial Hall and its surrounding grounds have been on the UNESCO World Heritage List.