The National Museum in Gdańsk, one of the oldest museums in Poland, was established by the merger of the Gdańsk City Museum (est. 1870) and the Handicraft Museum (est. 1881). Its core is the collection of Jacob Kabrun (1759–1814), comprising several thousand paintings, drawings and prints by European masters from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 19th century.

The Museum is spread across a number of sites: the main building, a late Gothic post-Franciscan monastery, houses the Department of Historical Art; the Abbots’ Palace in Gdańsk-Oliwa houses the Department of Modern Art; the Department of Ethnography is located in the Abbot’s Granary; the Green Gate in the Long Market is where temporary exhibitions are held; the National Anthem Museum is housed in a manor in Będomin which once belonged to the anthem’s author Józef Wybicki, while the Polish Gentry Museum is in a historic manor in Waplewo Wielkie. The rich collection of the Gdańsk Photography Gallery is part of the Department of Modern Art, although it has its own seat in Gdańsk’s Main Town.