National Museum in Warsaw

The National Museum in Warsaw on Aleje Jerozolimskie is the largest museum in the Polish capital and one of the most important collections in the country. Founded in 1862 as a municipal museum of fine arts, it moved into its current functionalist building by Tadeusz Tolwinski in 1938. During the Second World War German troops looted thousands of works; some returned after liberation, others remain on missing-art registers. The single most unusual gallery is the Faras collection of early Christian Nubian wall paintings, rescued from present-day Sudan by Polish archaeologists in the 1960s before the Aswan dam flooded the region. Jan Matejko's monumental history paintings, including the Battle of Grunwald, plus works by Stanislaw Wyspianski define the museum's national identity. The Wilanow Palace and Royal Castle branches are also part of the museum network.