Copernicus’ Treasury is a room in JU Museum Collegium Maius. It houses items that remind us of the great astronomer. Some of the exhibits are related to little known facts about Nicolaus Copernicus’ life. Copernicus’ Treasury is part of the JU Museum Collegium Maius and is available for visiting throughout the year.

The 15th century was marked by a rapid development of astronomical and mathematical science at the University of Kraków. Amongst the many young students arriving in Kraków from Poland and abroad there were also the Copernicus brothers, Nicolaus and Andreas. A wall display in Copernicus’ Treasury shows a copy of their signatures in the book of admissions from 1491. They attended the Faculty of Philosophy, also known Faculty of Liberal Arts.

One of the most important items presented in the room are gifts from Prof. Marcin Bylica of Olkusz: an Arabic astrolabe from Cordoba (1054) and a set of three devices from the late 15th century: a torquetum, an astrolabe, and a celestial globe. The gift-giver was a court astrologer and doctor of Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus in Buda. The instruments arrived in Kraków in 1493, during the time that Nicolaus Copernicus was a student at the University of Kraków.

Other interesting exhibits include a framed picture of the Earth taken from the Moon, given to JU Museum by the first man to ever set foot on it, Neil Armstrong. The American astronaut gifted the picture during his visit in Kraków on the 500th anniversary of Copernicus’ birthday, describing him as a ‘giant’ in a short inscription attached to the photograph.

Visitors of Copernicus’ Treasury can also see facsimiles of the astronomer’s greatest work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (‘On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres’). The Jagiellonian University has managed to recover it from the Czechoslovakian authorities in the 1960s in exchange for several works by Czech educator John Amos Comenius.