Town Hall in Białystok - Museum of Podlasie

Situated in a restored, 18th century building of the Town Hall, the museum presents many of permanent exhibitions from the fields of art, archeology, and ethnography, as well as regularly organized temporary exhibitions.

The collection of paintings comprises about 800 works of well-known Polish artists from the second half of 18th century to the modern times. In the museum you can also see an examples of artistic handicrafts, from the fields of goldsmithing, ceramics, and utility glass. In the ethnographic section, about 9,000 exhibits were collected, mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries, among which the real gems are the double-warp fabrics. The archaeological exhibition includes over 20,000 exhibits from various periods which come from the excavation work carried out in the region.

The history of the museum dates back to 1949, and the first location was the right wing of the Branicki Palace, where the institution resided from 1949. The collections were moved to the current headquarters in 1958. Nowadays, the Podlasie Museum is one of the largest museums in the region, the collections are located in eight branches, among which the Town Hall is the headquarters.