10 Zlotys 200th Anniversary of the Ossoliński National Institute

The Ossolineum — formally the Ossoliński National Institute — was founded in Lwów in 1817 by Count Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński, who donated his personal library and art collection to establish what became one of the most important Polish cultural repositories in existence. Its survival across two centuries is genuinely improbable: the institution weathered Austro-Hungarian administration, two world wars, Soviet occupation, and the postwar amputation of Lwów itself from Poland. After 1945, the collections were split — the manuscripts relocated to Wrocław, while much of the art remained in Lwów under Soviet, then Ukrainian, custody.