The Szczecin Museum

Part of the National Museum, the Szczecin Museum explores the history of the Polish city of Szczecin.

Amongst the exhibits at the Szczecin Museum, it displays clothing, furniture, and paintings dating back to the seventeenth century and a collection of fourteenth and fifteenth century Pomeranian coins. Exhibitions are described in Polish and German.

History of The Szczecin Museum

The Szczecin Museum is part of the National Museum, which is housed in one of the most renowned and distinctive buildings in the city, and is the largest cultural institution in West Pomerania.

The baroque palace which houses the Szczecin Museum was designed by Gerard Cornelius on Walrawe, and was built between 1726-1727. The Szczecin Museum – a subsidiary of the National Museum – is housed in the Wały Chrobrego complex, which was built between 1907-1913 by Wilhelm Meyer Schwartau, and has been home to The City Museum since its completion.

The city of Szczecin has been home to a number of historical and cultural collections over the centuries, but due to political and military catastrophe, have never been uniformly housed or displayed.

The Szczecin Museum is thus a merger of various collections that have survived over proceeding centuries, and in its current state houses over 150,000 objects including works of old and contemporary art as well as relics of archaeology, ethnography, and numismatics that relate to the city itself.

The Szczecin Museum Today

The museum houses objects from pre-war German collections which were salvaged from destroyed buildings, warehouses, and stores. There is also a large medieval and contemporary art collection, as well as extensive jewellery, stonework, woodwork, clothing, and religious objects, paintings, and architectural finds on display.

The museum also houses a large collection of archaeological finds from the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and is home to one of Poland’s greatest collections of relics of non-European cultures.

The museum holds frequent exhibitions that delve into the items they hold in their collection – for example, it is now possible to view one of the museum’s most precious items, the ‘Portrait of Pomeranian Duke Philip I’, at 17 billion pixels online, and there is an open-air West-Pomeranian Narrow-Gauge Railway train on display and available to view.

Getting to The Szczecin Museum

The museum is a four minute drive from the middle of Szczecin, primarily along the Szczerbcowa road. For those who want to enjoy a scenic walk through the centre of the city, the Museum is reachable in around 15 minutes via Małopolska and Wały Chrobrego, and is near the Chrorby Embankment, a promenade landmark which dates to 1902.