The roots of the Military Museum trace back to the Wielkopolska Uprising. Founded as part of the 1919 celebrations of Wielkopolska’s unification with the rest of the reborn Polish nation, the museum was born by co-opting the location and collection of the Hindenburg Museum - a too-soon German institution created in 1916 to commemorate their success in WWI. The Germans would soon have their revenge, however, liquidating the museum during WWII by sending German exhibits back to Berlin and destroying the Polish ones. Lesson-not-learned, the Poles began talk of reviving the Military Museum only a decade later, and it just so happened that there was a big empty exhibition pavilion on the Town Square, where had once stood an armoury, no less.

Situated inside a brutal concrete and glass pavilion from 1954, the Military Museum has been garrisoned at the Poznań Town Square since 1962. A branch of the National Museum, its exhibits document the history of the Polish military from the 11th century onwards. Starting with scythes and halberds the collection includes the armour of winged hussars, sabres, muskets and cannons, as well as portraits of Polish military commanders and famous moments in their history. The unwieldy musket ‘kolowy’ is a particularly impressive effort, and surely completely useless in combat. The 20th century section features grenades, compasses and medical kits, and the upstairs is devoted to the Wielkopolska Uprising, with medals, uniforms and postcards from the era. One of the only surviving pieces from the pre-WWII collection of the museum is a solitary fragment of Wojciech Kossak's 1901 cycloramic painting, The Battle of the Pyramids; a monumental work depicting Napoleon Bonaparte's 1798 victory over the Mamluks in Egypt that originally measured 115m long by 15m high, the epic painting was cut into fragments in the early 20th century, many of which have been lost.

Visiting time: approx. 45mins.

GO TO THE WEBSITE OF THIS BRANCH OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM HERE.