This could be the end of the frying pan in front of the National Museum in Krakow. The Gardening Team of the City of Krakow has presented a concept for de-concretizing the square, where tourists, residents and unfortunate plants fry every summer, drying in small pots. But is every moment the right time for a "green revolution"?
The square in front of the National Museum in Krakow is a tough nut to crack. It has been one of Krakow's hottest pans for more than a decade, it lacks trees and permeable paving, and prototype solutions introduced a few years ago have not yielded the expected results. At the same time, the structure of the square and the peculiarities of the buildings standing on it do not make it easy to change this state of affairs. Will it succeed this time?
The square in front of the Main Building of the National Museum in Cracow
Photo: Chris Olszewski © CC BY-SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
museum pan
Preparations for greening this space appeared shortly after the renovation of the square in 2015. Now the vegetation in front of the museum building has its place in special urban furniture, which are also pots and deck chairs, set up in front of the building in 2017. Initially the project was met with enthusiasm by residents, today it is an illustration of how misguided the idea is to green concrete spaces with plants planted in pots. Year after year, the "green deckchairs" live only for a short time, and the rachitic trees, which do not have the right conditions for the development of the root system, do not provide even a substitute for shade. Instead, it is an interesting activity to observe the more hardy species that sometimes populate the cracked soil in the pots in front of the MNK.
green ferment
The need to change this state of affairs has been talked about for some time. Last December, the debate about greenery in front of the MNK was revived by Lukasz Szydlak - a Krakow activist and creator of the experimental Zielony Blok garden in Prądnik Biały. At the time, the gardener mysteriously announced on social media his intentions to publicize the problems facing the museum's frying pan. Lukasz Szydlak's posts apparently carried so much publicity that just a few months later, the Garden Team of the City of Krakow boasted a finished project, the implementation of which would be financed thanks to one of the winning entries in this year's edition of Krakow's Civic Budget. What will change in the square in front of the MNK and why only now?
The green square in front of the Main Building of the National Museum in Krakow before the 2015 reconstruction.
Photo: Mamik/photopolska.eu © CC BY-SA 3.0 | Wikimedia Commons
Two problems of the concrete face of the MNK
The obstacles standing in the way of successfully greening and shading the space in front of the National Museum in Krakow are at least two. The first is the museum building itself. The modernist edifice, built according to a competition design by Boleslaw Szmidt, Juliusz Dumnicki and Janusz Juraszynski, has been in the register of historical monuments since 1991, so not only the building itself, but also its immediate surroundings are protected. Although it does not constitute a barrier to the mere reshaping of the square in front of the museum, the introduced solutions should take into account, for example, the view axes and the impact of the interference on the silhouette of the building in the context of the surrounding development.
The second problematic feature of the square on May 3 Avenue is what lies beneath its surface. In 2015, the construction of an underground parking lot offering visitors and residents of Krakow 150 parking spaces was completed. Since then, too, the entrance plaza has taken on its current concrete face. However needed at this location, the underground parking lot effectively hinders the introduction of tall greenery in front of the museum.
Green Square in front of the National Museum in Krakow
© Garden Team of the City of Krakow
deconstruct the square in front of the museum!
The metamorphosis announced by the Garden Team of the City of Krakow will take place in the southern part of the square, covering more than half of its surface. The western part will be dominated by rectangular flowerbeds, framed by benches and deckchairs and filled with a variety of vegetation, the choice of which was apparently dictated by the two "problems" of the space in front of the main entrance to the National Museum signalled above:
Due to the small volume of land between the plaza and the underground parking lot, the flowerbeds will be planted with blue-flowering perennials, a reference to Stanislaw Wyspianski's "Sapphire Workshop." Between the perennials, bulbous plants will be planted, which will also bloom blue in the spring, to be replaced by perennials. Thanks to this procedure, from early spring to late autumn the flower beds will be decorated with flowers that will provide food for wild pollinators. The perennial plantings will be surrounded by evergreen hedges, which, in addition to the green effect also in autumn and winter, will provide shelter and breeding places for birds.
Tall shrubs with a multi-trunk structure will also appear in some places, and one of the flowerbeds will be designated as a "Vegetable Garden," where residents will be able to grow herbs and vegetables. This landscaping element was created to continue the long-standing "Edible Krakow" project, so far implemented in pots-and-pots from 2017.
Green Square in front of the National Museum in Krakow
© Garden Team of the City of Krakow
green blocks
The "green classroom" and "green room" may be the most apt ideas. Located in the western part of the square, it would consist of several benches with a workbench, covered by a large pergola overgrown with vines. In the realities of the heavily sunlit square, this solution offers the fastest and surest prospect of getting much-needed shade. The "green room", intended for rest and work, is to look in a similar way - there under the pergola there will be deck chairs and benches with laptop tables.
Green Square in front of the National Museum in Krakow
© Garden Team of the City of Krakow
The only puzzling thing is the location of these two spaces. Wouldn't swapping their places be more beneficial from the point of view of children's safety? In the current layout, the "green classroom" will be located in the immediate vicinity of the entrance to the underground garage, behind which run the busy roadways of Adam Mickiewicz Avenue. The location of the green classroom on the other side of the square, near the Vegetation Center, would also increase the educational potential of the site.
Will the concept of Katarzyna Opałka's team be realized? Funding in the amount of PLN 800,000 will be provided by the Civic Budget, but the project must first be reviewed by other units of the local government, including the Cracow City Roads Authority.
Competition design for "Wyspianski Museum" in front of the MNK Main Building
designed by Heinle, Wischer und Partner Architekci © competition mat.
ideas for the National
For years there has also been talk of rebuilding the Main Building of the National Museum in Krakow itself. For this reason, an implementation-study architectural competition was organized in 2015, in which the jury selected a design by Prof. Boleslaw Stelmach's studio. The concept envisaged a comprehensive reconstruction of the interiors, a superstructure with a green roof, as well as new land use along the western façade and the square in front of the building's facade. In 2019, in turn, a competition was held to design the "Wyspianski Museum," a new volume that would appear on the west side of the interwar building. This time, the winner was the project developed by the Wroclaw office of Heinle, Wischer und Partner Architekci.
The realization of both concepts ultimately did not take place, instead the museum on Adam Mickiewicz Avenue underwent several smaller renovations, led by the modernization of the top floors for the arrangement of the "XX+XXI Gallery of Polish Art" exhibition in 2021.
Although this is a different plot of land, the above listing also does not omit plans to rebuild the Hotel Cracovia, standing vis-a-vis the Main Building, for the purpose of creating a Museum of Architecture and Design. The competition for the development of design documentation for this project was won in 2023 by the Krakow-based Lewicki Łatak Design Bureau, which convinced the jury with its idea of creating an underground walkway under Cracovia, leading to a green space arranged at the back of the complex designed by Prof. Witold Cęckiewicz in the 1960s. The fate of this investment is still in question - in recent announcements, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage assured of seeking funds (up to half a billion zlotys is at stake), but there was a lack of specifics. And the modernist hotel still stands largely empty and is slowly deteriorating.
Project for the reconstruction of Hotel Cracovia
proj.: Biuro Projektów Lewicki Łatak © competition mat.
everything in its own time
Now the National Museum in Cracow is trying on another architectural competition for the reconstruction of the main building. According to Prof. Andrzej Szczerski, director of the MNK, the institution is currently trying to obtain funding for such a project, anticipating that the announcement of the architectural competition could take place as early as 2027 and the start of the reconstruction three years later. The main building of the National Museum in Krakow would then be closed by 2035.
The next nine years with a concrete pan at the intersection of Adam Mickiewicz Avenue and May 3 is a long time. But maybe it's worth waiting with its modernization, if it comes to creating a comprehensive, coherent concept for the reconstruction of both the building and its surroundings, to be selected in the course of an anonymous, expert architectural competition formula? Especially since the designers would have a chance to work on a tissue that does not currently represent a significant value, predetermined for comprehensive rearrangement. If the idea of the Garden Team of the City of Krakow is realized, the competition task will have to take into account the building's just-modernized surroundings, or assume its next reconstruction, wasting the planted greenery, costs and effort incurred by the city's Katarzyna Opałka studio. It is worth noting that, at this point, the National Museum in Cracow is not announcing more precisely the scope of the planned competition. Consultation of both intentions - the greening of the square and the reconstruction of the museum building - could benefit all parties.
Greening the square in front of the National Museum in Cracow
© Garden Team of the City of Cracow
green idea bank
The team of the Gardener of the City of Krakow, Katarzyna Opałka, appointed in April 2025, is not idle. On March 20, 2026, the Green Bank of Ideas information campaign was launched on social media, in which the Gardener of the City of Krakow presents concepts to help green the city's public spaces. In addition to the described idea for the square in front of the National Museum, Katatrzyna Opałka's team has also developed, among other things, a plan for greening the Mogilskie Roundabout, transforming the parking lot at the intersection of Piwna and Józefińska streets, or building "urban oxygenators" - small islands of greenery located in hot spots on the map of the city's heat island. The Gardening Team of the City of Krakow also participated in the design of Stage II of the Railway Park under the railroad viaduct in Krakow, planned between Grzegórzecka and Miodowa streets. Implementation is scheduled for 2027 at the earliest. Will it repeat the success of the first section of the park under the flyover?
