National Museum of Ethnography

The State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw is the largest of its kind in Poland and was founded in 1888. It stands opposite the Zacheta Gallery at Ulica Kredytowa 1 in a 19th-century neoclassical building originally built for the National Credit Society of the Kingdom of Poland. The permanent exhibition shows Polish folk art, costumes, wood carvings and reverse-glass paintings, along with a significant collection of non-European objects from Africa, Latin America and Oceania, gathered by Polish travellers and researchers since the 19th century. The gallery of peasant art, with polychrome-painted chests and nativity figures, is especially memorable. The museum is a calm alternative to the crowded city-centre institutions and gives a direct sense of rural Poland before industrialisation.