Story
The story of National Museum in Wrocław
This museum found its home among ruins. After the Siege of Breslau had destroyed or badly damaged most of the city's historic buildings, Poland's new heritage office chose this relatively undamaged former Silesian regency office, built in 1883–1886, on 1 January 1947. The museum was established on 28 March 1947 and officially inaugurated on 11 July 1948. Its collections mirror Europe's shifting borders: after the Soviet Union annexed eastern Poland, art was brought here from cities such as Lviv, and a shipment in 1946 included Polish and European paintings of the 17th to 19th centuries.
Start with Silesian art of the 12th to 16th century, with tombs of Silesian princes and some of the most precious Gothic works in Poland. The European gallery shows Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Zurbarán and Kandinsky.
In 2022 a Lamentation by a follower of Cranach, stolen in 1946, finally came home. Admission to the gallery is free on Saturdays.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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