The collection, on Jerusalem Avenue, is housed in a building designed by Tadeusz Tolwiński, developed between 1927 and 1938 (earlier the museum had been located at ulica Podwale 15).

[7] During the invasion of Poland the building was damaged and after the Siege of Warsaw the collection was looted by the Gestapo led by Nazi historian Dagobert Frey, who had already prepared a meticulous list of the most valuable artwork on official visits from Germany in 1937.

[9] The Gestapo headquarters presented Rembrandt's portrait of Maerten Soolmans as a gift to Hans Frank in occupied Kraków and packed everything else to be shipped to Berlin.

[16] Since the 2011–12 renovation, the museum is also considered one of the most modern in Europe with a computer-led LED lighting allowing to enhance unique qualities of every painting and exhibit.

[18] Works by Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German and Polish artists were hung together, making it easy to observe and compare similarities and differences.

[18] The galleries reflect the richness and diversity of traditions and historical experiences of individual nations, which, however, built their cultural identity on the same foundation of Greco-Roman antiquity and the Christian religion.

[20] Many of the works included in the exhibition underline a distinct character of Central European regions such as Silesia between 1440 and 1520 (with large quartered polyptychs, epitaphs, votive and didactic plaques, and Ways of the Cross), Lesser Poland, Greater Poland and Kuyavia between 1440 and 1520 (with altarpieces and devotional paintings) and Gdańsk and the Hanseatic region between 1420 and 1520 (with large altars from Hamburg and Pomerania).

[21] Painting and sculpture with its representational character and imitation of reality (mimesis) was united with decorative arts in common goals and functions as well as in spaces where they were collected and exhibited.

[21] These "social spaces" have provided the key to the division of the gallery: 1. palace, villa, court; 2. church, chapel and domestic altar; 3. the city.

[24] Paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings from the 1920s and 1930s, Polish avant-garde film, photographs, photomontages, along with selected works of the 1980s independent culture, video and performance of the last forty years are exhibited in a 700 m2 gallery.

[27] The collection was further expanded through the purchase of paintings from the collection of Wojciech Kolasiński in the years 1877–1896 and bequests by Cyprian Lachnicki in 1906 including Flagellation of Christ by Pieter de Kempeneer, Portrait of a man in a yellow jerkin by Hans Schäufelein, Expulsion from Paradise by Pier Francesco Mola and Academic study by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.

The museum also features the works of other major European artists such as Rembrandt, Sandro Botticelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Auguste Renoir, Gustave Courbet, Angelica Kauffmann, Luca Giordano, Mattia Preti, Joos van Cleve, Jan Brueghel the Elder, David Teniers the Younger and Gaspare Traversi.