Czartoryski Museum

The Czartoryski Museum and Library is a museum located in Kraków, Poland, founded in Puławy in 1796 by Princess Izabela Czartoryska. The Puławy collections were partly destroyed after the November uprising of 1830–1831 and the subsequent confiscation of the Czartoryskis' property by the Russians. Most of the museum holdings, however, were saved and moved to Paris, where they reposed at the Hôtel Lambert. In 1870 Prince Władysław Czartoryski decided to move the collections to Kraków, where they arrived in 1876. The city had been granted a degree of autonomy following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.

The most renowned painting on display at the museum was the Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci, one of his best-known works. Other highlights of the collection are two works by Rembrandt, several antiquities, including sculptures, Renaissance tapestries as well as decorative arts, and paintings by Hans Holbein, Jacob Jordaens, Luca Giordano, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Dieric…