MNK Sukiennice

This guide to the MNK Sukiennice in Kraków starts at a ball on October 3rd, 1879, when painter Henryk Siemiradzki stopped the dancing to announce he was giving the city his newest canvas, Nero's Torches, to found a museum Kraków did not yet have. It follows what happened four days later, when the city council made the gift official and turned the hall's upper floor into the collection's first gallery. Look for the painting's candlelit martyrs and the Roman crowd watching, almost bored, in the scene itself.