Kraków’s richest art collection, including Leonardo Da Vinci's 15th-century masterpiece Lady with an Ermine (1489–90), used to belong to the noble Czartoryski family that opened it to the Polish public as a gesture of patriotism. Besides the star Da Vinci piece, and a number of Old Masters, there is Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Etruscan art, winged hussar armor, trophies seized from the Turks during the Battle of Vienna (1683), and the Grunwald Swords from the 15th-century battle.
Apart from the paintings, the museum itself has had its own exciting history. Secretly moved to Paris in 1830, the collection shifted to Kraków in the 1870s. During WWII, German occupiers seized many valuable paintings and took them to Germany. Some items were never recovered.
