The Lady with an Ermine
Cecilia and her ermine — the last room's throne.
Zygmunt Put — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Scotch Mist — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dorota Matloch — CC BY 3.0 · Dorota Matloch — CC BY 3.0
The Czartoryski is home of Poland's most famous painting: the Lady with an Ermine — Leonardo da Vinci (1490) painting Cecilia Gallerani, the Duke of Milan's beloved, with her white animal: one of only four Leonardo oil women on earth (with the Mona Lisa and her sisters) — her room alone the journey's purpose, her story an epic: hidden from tsars by princesses, looted by the Nazis for Hans Frank's villa, returned 1946. The museum itself is Poland's oldest (1796): Princess Czartoryska gathered Poland's relics to rescue memory after the partitions — a Rembrandt (the Good Samaritan landscape, his only such scene in Poland), royal keepsakes and Ottomanica (a complete grand vizier's tent) in a splendidly restored house. An elegant, lightly crowded ninety minutes steps from the Florian Gate — and the painting closes the route, never opens it: the last room is her throne.
Cecilia and her ermine — the last room's throne.
Vienna's Ottoman spoils entire.
Pijarska 15, 31-015 Krakow
The City ArsenalA sixteenth-century arsenal building attached to Kraków's walls, today a branch 1 minute walk4.8
Jan Matejko HouseThe house of the painter Jan Matejko on Floriańska street in the old town, where1 minute walk4.7
The Barbican, Florian Gate & PlantyThe Barbican is Krakow's war helmet: a round gate-fort (1498) of three-metre wal2 minutes walk4.7
The Defensive WallsWhat remains of Kraków's medieval wall: a short stretch holding the Florian Gate2 minutes walk4.7
Museum of Pharmacy, KrakówA museum of the Jagiellonian University in a fifteenth-century house on Floriańs2 minutes walk4.8Prince Czartoryski bought her for his mother (1798) — the family hid her from Russia's tsar, smuggled her to Paris, brought her home, hid her from the Nazis, who found her for governor Frank's residence — the Allies recovering her (1946). The family sold the whole collection to the state (2016) at a token price, a gift to the nation — the Lady now every Pole's property.