The name of this museum doesn’t sound that exciting, but the Jagiellonian University Medical School’s Museum of Pharmacy is one of the largest museums of its kind in Europe and arguably the best. Accommodated in a beautiful historic townhouse worth the visit alone, it features a 22,000-piece collection, which includes old laboratory equipment, rare pharmaceutical instruments, heaps of glassware, stoneware, mortars, jars, barrels, medical books and documents.
Several pharmacies dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, including one from Lesko, have been painstakingly recreated here, and the garret is crammed with elixirs and panaceas, including vile vials or dried mummy powder. Much attention is given to the ‘righteous gentile’ Tadeusz Pankiewicz and the Pharmacy Under the Eagle he courageously kept in operation in the Jewish ghetto during the German occupation.
