Things to do in Zakopane, Southern Poland: The Best History Museums

The Koliba villa, the first building erected to Stanislaw Witkiewicz's design in the Zakopane Style, is situated at Kościeliska Street, Zakopane's oldest street with time-honoured houses and characteristic Tatra crofts at every step. In these surroundings we can better understand Stanislaw Witkiewicz's concept. Five rooms in the oldest part were arranged in accordance with their original function as, on the ground floor, the dining room, drawing room and bedroom, and, on the first floor, Gnatowski's room and his servant's room. Zygmunt Gnatowski's ethnographic collection returned to its place in the 'Tatra highlander's chamber'. Other pieces of furniture, household utensils and small craftsmen's articles, all in the Zakopane Style, come from the turn of the century when the style was in full bloom. The Museum of the Zakopane Style is the only place in Poland acquainting the visitor with the history of the achievements of the first theoretically wrought and successfully effected concept of a Polish national style based on the architecture and decorative art of the inhabitants of the region of Podhale.

The main building of the Tatra Museum is a valuable monument of architecture in the Zakopane Style. It was built between 1913 and 1922 to a design worked out jointly by Stanislaw Witkiewicz (façade) and Franciszek Mączyński (technical design). Though modified over the years, the exhibition in the main building has survived to this day unchanged in its basic concept. As before, the goal is to give the visitor an insight into the most important aspects of the natural environment in the Tatra Mountains and the region of Podhale, the history of the area and the local people's way of living, as well as their culture.

The Kornel Makuszyński Museum is Zakopane's second biographic-literary museum after the Jan Kasprowicz Museum in the Harenda. It is based in the Opolanka house where the Makuszyńskis had stayed during their almost annual summer and winter visits to Zakopane between the two World Wars, and where they settled after World War II. Many precious objects in the couple's possession and their large library perished in Warsaw during World War II. The Makuszyński Museum houses merely a fraction of what the writer, an art collector on friendly terms with many outstanding artists, had assembled. The Museum was set up in 1966 following a donation made by Janina Gluzińska-Makuszyńska (1896-1972) the writer's widow. The museum in the Opolanka house occupies four rooms of the Makuszyńskis' former flat. The collection includes successive editions of Makuszyński's works, in addition to historical-literary studies on his oeuvre and diaries. Besides the writer's own manuscripts, his archives also embrace an ample set of letters from outstanding writers, pain-ters, musicians, theatre people, scholars and politicians, as well as numerous letters from his readers. To complement the archives, there are also press cuttings and photographs. The art collection embraces works by famous Polish artists (paintings by Julian Falat, Wladyslaw Jarocki, Fryderyk Pautsch, Kazimierz Sichulski, Wladyslaw Skoczylas, Stanislaw Wyspiański et al., and sculptures by Konstanty Laszczka, Henryk Kuna et al.). There are also designs for illustrations to Makuszyński's books, antique furniture mostly in the Biedermeier style, miniatures, antique art weavings (eastern rug, Persian prayer carpet and Japanese screen), and numerous utility antiques: lamps, clocks, Polish and French glass articles, and Chinese, English, Saxon and Meissen porcelain.