National Museum in Warsaw
Main entrance to the National Museum | |
Location within the city of Warsaw | |
Interactive fullscreen map | |
| Established | 20 May 1862 |
|---|---|
| Location | Aleje Jerozolimskie 3, Warsaw, Poland |
| Coordinates | 52°13′54″N 21°01′29″E / 52.2317°N 21.0247°E |
| Type | National museum |
| Collections | Painting, Sculpture, Decorative arts |
| Visitors | 540,138 (2015) |
| Director | Agnieszka Lajus |
| Public transit access | Tram: 7, 8, 9,22, 24, 25 Bus: 111, 117,158, 507, 517, 521 (Muzeum Narodowe) 116, 128, 195, 180, 222, 503 (Foksal) |
| Website | mnw.art.pl/en |
The National Museum in Warsaw (Polish: Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, MNW) is a national museum in Warsaw, one of the largest museums in Poland and the largest in the capital. It comprises a collection of ancient art (Egyptian, Greek, Roman), counting about 11,000 objects, an extensive gallery of Polish painting since the 16th century and a collection of foreign painting including Italian, French, Flemish, Dutch, German and Russian works. The museum also houses numismatic collections, a gallery of applied arts and a department of oriental art, with the largest collection of Chinese art in Poland, comprising some 5,000 objects. With over 1.5 million visitors in 2025, it is the 47th most-visited art museum in the world.
The museum was established on 20 May 1862 as the Museum of Fine Arts, Warsaw, and renamed the National Museum in 1916. Its current building on Jerusalem Avenue, designed by Tadeusz Tolwiński in a modernist style, was inaugurated on 18 June 1938. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the collection was looted by the Gestapo. Many works were recovered from Germany after the end of World War II under the supervision of longtime director Stanisław Lorentz, though more than 5,000 artifacts remain missing. The collection now comprises over 830,000 items.
The museum is known for the Faras Gallery, housing Europe's largest collection of Nubian Christian art recovered by Polish archaeologists from the Christian cathedral at Faras in Sudan. Other major holdings include the Gallery of Medieval Art, with artifacts from Silesia, Lesser Poland, Greater Poland, and the Hanseatic region, and the Gallery of 19th-century Art, which displays Jan Matejko's monumental oil painting Battle of Grunwald completed in 1878. The National Museum in Warsaw also operates the Nieborów Palace as a subsidiary since 1945, the Poster Museum in Wilanów, and the Xawery Dunikowski Sculpture Museum in Królikarnia.