Visit Krakow and you will soon notice how rich its cultural life is – every district has fascinating institutions to discover. It is no surprise, then, that the city is a paradise for visitors who love spending hours in its museums. Here are seven of the most interesting museums in Krakow, perfect for a city break in any season – and especially on a cold or rainy day.

National Museum – Main Building

The National Museum in Krakow has many branches across the city, but its best-known collections are in the Main Building. Here you can see a rich collection of militaria, decorative arts and 20th-century Polish painting. Look out for the excellent temporary exhibitions, which regularly appear on the ground floor.

Wawel Royal Castle in Krakow

Wawel Royal Castle

The Royal Castle on Wawel Hill is a building every Pole knows. Once home to Poland’s greatest kings, today it opens its doors to visitors who want to see how the monarchs lived. Highlights include the State Rooms, the Royal Private Apartments, the Armoury, the Crown Treasury, the royal tombs, the Dragon’s Den and the Cathedral Museum.

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Museum of Pharmacy

The Museum of Pharmacy is a great choice for anyone curious about how apothecaries used to work. Its collection includes pharmacy jars, herbaria, old pharmacy handbooks, furniture from historic pharmacies, medicinal raw materials and apothecary tools. Spread over five floors of a historic townhouse, it is one of the Krakow museums most worth seeing.

Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art in the Cloth Hall

The Cloth Hall in the middle of the Main Market Square has delighted visitors with its architecture for centuries. What many people don’t realise is that inside the Cloth Hall is one of Krakow’s most interesting museums. The Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art focuses on paintings and sculptures from the late 18th and the whole of the 19th century, including works by Jan Matejko, Władysław Podkowiński, Henryk Siemiradzki, Józef Chełmoński and Jacek Malczewski.

Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory

The historic factory building houses the permanent exhibition “Kraków under Nazi Occupation 1939–1945”, which shows the lives of Krakow’s Polish and Jewish residents during the German occupation. The museum also tells the moving story of Oskar Schindler and the Polish Jews he saved during the war. Tickets are popular, so it is worth booking in advance.

Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology

Manggha, the Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, also deserves a place on this list. The heart of its collection comes from the Kyoto–Kraków Foundation, established by film director Andrzej Wajda and Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda. The museum mainly shows contemporary Japanese art – prints, paintings, photographs, drawings and posters – as well as decorative ceramics, traditional kimonos, masks and costumes from nō theatre. Its riverside setting also offers a lovely view of Wawel.

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MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art

No list of Krakow’s museums would be complete without MOCAK, the Museum of Contemporary Art. It opened in 2010 and brought a breath of fresh air to a city so focused on the art and architecture of past centuries. The collection concentrates on Polish and international artists from the second half of the 20th century onwards, including conceptual art, postmodernism, abstraction and performance, and MOCAK regularly hosts interesting temporary exhibitions. It is located in Zabłocie, close to Schindler’s Factory, so you can easily visit both on the same day.

Planning more than museums? See our guide to Krakow in 2 days and art galleries worth seeing in Krakow. Grand Ascot Hotel is just 600 m – a 6-minute walk – from the Main Market Square and the Cloth Hall.

For more ideas, see our Krakow travel guide.