In the beautifully restored cellars of the Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace, visitors can admire 800 fragments of the most valuable architectural sculptures from all over Poland, originating from such places as St. Mary's Church, Krakow Cathedral or Gniezno Cathedral.
The exhibits include original stone elements or plaster casts of sculptures – from portals, keystones and royal tombs. Usually these sculptures – a testimony to a nearly thousand years of history of architecture in Poland - are difficult to inspect closely because of their inaccessible location.
Since its inception in 1879, the National Museum in Krakow has been home to original fragments of secular and religious buildings – mostly from Krakow – which due to destruction were replaced with copies. The Museum has also collected plaster casts of architectural sculpture elements, which could not become part of the museum collection, but which were thought to be important for the history of Polish art. In the 1920s, these collections were assigned separate exhibition space in the Town Hall Tower. However, after it had been closed in the early 1960s, almost the entire collection of architectural sculpture elements and plaster casts were stored away and gradually forgotten.
