Placed on two floors in a restored 17th century granary, the museum was opened to the public on 13 September 2013.

[1][2] The museum's building, an old granary from the 17th century, is located in Kraków's Old Town (Stare Miasto) in proximity to a Capuchin monastery.

After World War II it became property of the National Museum and in 1969 held a furniture storehouse.

The premises were cleared of barracks, new pavements were laid and a lapidarium of several hundred architectural fragments from old buildings in Kraków was created behind the museum.

After WW II, the museum acquired a number of outstanding European artworks such as "Crucifixion" (c. 1340–1350) by Paolo Veneziano, Adoration of the Child (c. 1508) by Lorenzo Lotto, "The Sermon of St. John the Baptist" (c. ) by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, a French 14th-century sculpture "Madonna with the Child" and "The Bishop's Bust" (c. 1500) from the Netherlands.