Museum sights in Poland
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Auschwitz
Established within disused army barracks in 1940, Auschwitz was initially designed to hold Polish prisoners, but was expanded into the largest centre for the extermination of European Jews. Two more camps were subsequently established: Birkenau and Monowitz. In the course of their operation, between one and 1.5 million people were killed.
Auschwitz was only partially destroyed by the fleeing Nazis, so many of the original buildings remain as a bleak document of the camp's history. A dozen of the 30 surviving prison blocks house sections of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The cinema in the visitors centre shows a short documentary film about the liberation of the camp…
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Salt Mine
Just outside the administrative boundaries of Kraków, some 14km southeast of the city centre, Wieliczka (vyeh- leech -kah) is famous for its ultra-deep Salt Mine, which has been in continuous operation for 700 years and can be visited. It’s an eerie world of pits and chambers, and everything has been carved by hand from salt blocks. The mine was included on Unesco’s World Heritage List in 1978.
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Monastery of Jasna Góra
Impressive though it is, the exterior of Monastery of Jasna Góra gives little indication of the grandeur layered behind its walls. Exploring this functioning monastery gives a fascinating insight into its history, and a deep appreciation for its present day relevance. Arrive early and take your time.
You are free to wander around the complex at your own leisure (crowds permitting). Audio guides are available for four routes; the most important covers the main sanctuary and takes 45 minutes.
In the oldest part of the complex, the Chapel of Our Lady (Kaplica Cudownego Obrazu) contains the revered Black Madonna.The picture is ceremoniously unveiled at 06:00 and 13:30 (14:00 …
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Amber Museum
The Foregate is home to the Amber Museum, wherein you can marvel at the history of Baltic gold.
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Palace & National Museum
The tiny village of Rogalin, 12km west of Kórnik, was the seat of yet another Polish aristocratic clan, the Raczyński family, who built a palace here in the closing decades of the 18th century, and lived in it until WWII. Plundered but not damaged during WWII, the palace was taken over by the state.
In 1991, Count Edward Raczyński, who had been Polish ambassador to Britain at the outbreak of WWII and a leading figure in the Polish government in exile, reaffirmed the use of the palace as a branch of Poznań's National Museum. Less visited than Kórnik's castle and much more Germanic in its appearance, the Rogalin palace consists of a massive, two-storey, baroque central st…
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Old Bishops' Palace
In the southeastern corner of the courtyard of the Cathedral Hill complex is the Old Bishops' Palace. This is now Nicolaus Copernicus Museum's main exhibition space. On the ground floor are objects discovered during postwar archaeological excavations, while the other levels are largely devoted to the life and work of Copernicus, along with temporary displays and a collection of old telescopes.
The most interesting section is on the first floor, where modern artists' interpretations of the great man, in sculpture and oils, are presented, before you pass into the room containing books and other artefacts from his time.
Though Copernicus is essentially remembered for his astr…
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Castle and Museum of Warmia & Masuria
The most important historic building in town is the massive, redbrick 14th-century castle. Despite its age, it’s in excellent shape and now houses an art gallery, restaurant and open-air theatre, along with the Museum of Warmia & Masuria. Two rooms on the 1st floor are dedicated to astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who was the administrator of Warmia and lived in the castle for more than three years (1516–20). He made some of his astronomical observations here, and you can still see the diagram he drew on the cloister wall to record the equinox and thereby calculate the exact length of the year. Models of the instruments he used are on display in his former living quarter…
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National Museum
Located in the vaulted interiors of the former Franciscan monastery, this is among the best museums in the country. It covers the broad spectrum of Polish and international art and crafts, boasting extensive collections of paintings, woodcarvings, gold and silverware, embroidery, fabrics, porcelain, faience, wrought iron and furniture.
The National Museum has the original figure of St George from the spire of the Court of the Fraternity of St George, an assortment of huge, elaborately carved Danzig-style wardrobes (typical of the city, from where they were sent all over the country) and several beautiful ceramic tiled stoves.
The first floor is given over to paintings, wi…
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Museum of Fighting & Martyrdom
Treblinka is the site of the Nazis' second-largest extermination camp after Auschwitz. Between July 1942 and August 1943, on average more than 2000 people a day, mostly Jews, were gassed in the camp's massive gas chambers and their bodies burnt on huge, open-air cremation pyres.
Following an insurrection by the inmates in August 1943, the extermination camp was completely demolished and the area ploughed over and abandoned. The site of the camp is now the Museum of Fighting & Martyrdom. Access is by a short road that branches off the Małkinia-Sokołów Podlaski road and leads to a car park and a kiosk that provides information and sells guidebooks. Across from the kiosk, th…
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Majdanek State Museum
Some 4km southeast of Lublin’s centre is Majdanek extermination camp, where tens of thousands were murdered. The site is now the Majdanek State Museum, founded only four months after the camp’s liberation – the first of its kind in the world. Unlike other extermination camps, the Nazis went to no effort to conceal Majdanek. Coming from the main road, the sudden appearance of time-frozen guard towers and barbed-wire fences interrupting the sprawl of suburbia is disquieting. The details are all the more confronting; gas chambers are open to visitors, and many of the prisoners’ possessions are on display. The 5km walk through the museum starts at the Visitor’s Centre, pass…
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Muzeum Pawilon-X
Muzeum Pawilon-X, which preserves a wing of the old political prison. The cells are labelled with the names of the more famous prisoners who were incarcerated here, the best known being Józef Piłsudski, who did time in cell No 25 on the 1st floor; another cell contains the anvil on which prisoners were made to forge their own shackles. Inside are paintings by Alexander Sochaczewski (1843–1923), a former inmate who, along with 20,000 other anti-Russian insurgents, was transported to the labour camps of Siberia in 1866. The paintings, such as the huge Pożegnanie Europy (Farewell to Europe), depict the suffering of his fellow prisoners. In the museum grounds is an origi…
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Treblinka II
It's a 10-minute walk from the car park to the site of the Treblinka II extermination camp, alongside a symbolic railway representing the now-vanished line that brought the cattle trucks full of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. The huge granite monument, 200m east of the ramp, stands on the site where the gas chambers were located. Around it is a vast symbolic cemetery in the form of a forest of granite stones representing the towns and villages where the camp's victims came from.
Unlike Auschwitz, nothing remains of the extermination camp, but the labels on the plan showing the original layout speak volumes: 'Building for Sorting Gold and Valuables'; 'Storehouse for Victims'…
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Foregate
Just behind the Upland Gate is a large 15th-century construction known as the Foregate. It consists of the Torture House (Katownia) to the west and a high Prison Tower (Wieża Więzienna) to the east, linked to one another by two walls. When the Upland Gate was built, the Foregate lost its defensive function and was turned into a jail. The Torture House then had an extra storey added as a court room and was topped with decorative Renaissance parapets.
A gallows was built on the square to the north, where public executions of condemned foreigners were held (locals had the 'privilege' of being hanged on Długi Targ). The Foregate was used as a jail till the mid-19th century.…
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Roads to Freedom Exhibition
The Roads to Freedom exhibition is a collection of multimedia displays and artefacts illustrating Poland’s turbulent path to democracy, from the 1956 uprisings to martial law and the collapse of communism. At the time of research it was about to move from its former home in the shipyards to this location, attached to the Solidarity HQ. The exhibition is a poignant reminder of just how much has changed over the last 60 years, and of just how much dedication and sacrifice went into achieving that change. It’s well captioned in English, and is something every visitor to Gdańsk should see – it rounds out the Main Town’s Renaissance splendour with the knowledge of recent event…
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National Museum’s Department of Early Art
The National Museum’s Department of Early Art is located in the vaulted interiors of the former Franciscan monastery. Among the best museums in the country, it covers the broad spectrum of Polish and international art and crafts, boasting extensive collections of paintings, woodcarvings, gold and silverware, embroidery, fabrics, porcelain, faience, wrought iron and furniture. It has the original figure of St George from the spire of the Court of the Fraternity of St George, an assortment of huge, elaborately carved Danzig-style wardrobes (typical of the city, from where they were sent all over the country) and several beautiful ceramic tiled stoves.
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Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is housed in a large, finely restored granary from 1591. Though there is little information in English, kids will enjoy seeing the range of birds, animals and insects (albeit stuffed). Of particular interest is the video showing the process of taxidermy (animal stuffing, which, it turns out, is far less gruesome than it sounds) and a busy beehive whose occupants are blissfully oblivious to the fact that they live in a Big Brother beehive. Note the intricate wooden structure supporting the roof on the top floor; it’s an exquisite example of 16th-century engineering, joining beams with pegs rather than nails.
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Czartoryski Museum
This museum is one of Kraków's jewels. The star pieces of the collection are Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with the Ermine and Rembrandt's Landscape with the Good Samaritan (1638). Also on display are Turkish weapons and artefacts, including a campaign tent from the 1683 Battle of Vienna.
Originally established in 1800, the collection has had a turbulent history - some items stolen by the Nazis were never recovered. Still, there's a lot to see, including Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Etruscan ancient art, Oriental armour, artistic handicrafts from Europe and Asia, and old European painting, mainly Italian, Dutch and Flemish.
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Pawiak Prison Museum
Built between 1830 and 1833, Pawiak was Poland’s most notorious political prison, once used for incarcerating the enemies of the Russian tsar. During WWII it became even more notorious as the Gestapo’s main prison facility – between 1939 and 1944 around 100,000 prisoners passed through its gates, of whom around 37,000 were executed on site and 60,000 transported to the gas chambers. It was blown up by the Nazis in 1944, but half of the mangled gateway, complete with rusting, original barbed wire, and three detention cells (which you can visit) survive, along with chilling memoirs of the horrors suffered by the inmates.
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National Museum
National Museum, where 17th- and 18th-century interiors are so alive you feel like you’re trespassing in a bishop’s boudoir. Keep an eye on the ornamental ceilings (plafonds) painted from 1641 by Venetian Tommaso Dolabella. The centrepiece is the former dining hall where the whole brood of bishops stare down from their 56 portraits. The upper and lower portraits of this evocative historical montage were painted two centuries apart. The rest of this captivatingly cavernous multilevel museum leads through collections of porcelain, historical armour and various centuries and genres of Polish painting.
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Tykocin Museum
Renovated after the war, the synagogue is now the Tykocin Museum. The interior, with a massive almemar (raised platform on which the reading desk stands) in the centre and an elaborate Aron Kodesh (the Holy Ark where the Torah scrolls are kept) in the eastern wall, has preserved many of the original wall paintings, including Hebraic inscriptions. Adjacent to the former prayer room is a small exhibition containing photos and documents of Tykocin’s Jewish community and objects related to religious ritual, such as elaborate brass and silver hanukiahs (candelabras), Talmudic books and liturgical equipment.
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Castle Museum
The castle accommodates the Castle Museum. Its star exhibits are six spectacular sarcophagi of the Pomeranian dukes. These large tin boxes are decorated with a fine engraved ornamentation, and were made between 1606 and 1637 by artists from Königsberg. Following the death of the last Pomeranian duke, Bogusław XIV, the crypt was walled up until the sarcophagi were discovered during restoration work in 1946, after the castle’s wartime destruction. The remains of the dukes were deposited in the cathedral, while the least-damaged sarcophagi were restored for display.
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Museum of Folk Architecture
Sanok is noted for its unique Museum of Folk Architecture, a skansen (open-air museum of traditional architecture) about 2km north of the centre. Poland’s largest open-air museum, it has gathered about 120 traditional buildings from the southeast of the country and provides an insight into the culture of the Boyks and Lemks. Among the highlights are four timber churches, an inn, a school and even a fire station. The interiors of many cottages are furnished and decorated as they once were, while some buildings house exhibitions; one of these features a collection of 200 icons.
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Kwidzyn Museum
Most of the building is now the Kwidzyn Museum, which has several sections including displays on medieval sacred art, regional folk crafts and plenty of farming implements, as well as a display in the cellar detailing the German-funded archaeological excavations around the site. There are some grim sets of manacles hanging off the dungeon walls for effect, and some inexplicably placed cannons beside them. You won’t find any English labelling, but the fine original interiors justify a visit, and there are some good views over the countryside from some of the windows.
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Roztocze National Park
Decreed in 1974, Roztocze National Park covers an area of 79 sq km to the south and east of Zwierzyniec. The site was a nature reserve for more than 350 years as part of the Zamoyski family estate. Following the purchase of a vast stretch of land (complete with six towns, 149 villages and about 1600 sq km of forest) in 1589, Jan Zamoyski created an enclosed game reserve named Zwierzyniec (zoological garden). This was a remarkable achievement at that time, given that this was not a hunting ground but a protected area for various animal species to roam in relative freedom.
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Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum, which features exhibitions relating to the flora and fauna of the park (mostly forest scenes with stuffed animals and a collection of plants), the park’s history, and the archaeology and ethnography of the region. The permanent exhibition can be seen only by guided tour, which adds flavour to an otherwise static museum but is a tad expensive if your group numbers are small. The viewing tower provides terrific views over the village, and just north of the museum you will find a grove of 250-year-old oaks.
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