Museums
Museums in Poland
From royal collections to wartime history.
Poland's museums carry a heavy and important history: POLIN and the Warsaw Rising Museum in the capital, the memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Krakow's royal and art collections. Each page covers what is inside and who it suits.
All Museums in Poland
Warsaw
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
An award-winning museum tracing a thousand years of Jewish life in Poland, on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto.
Kraków
Rynek Underground
An atmospheric archaeology museum beneath the Main Square, walking you through the medieval market on its original cobbles.
Kraków
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial
The preserved site of the largest German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, now a memorial and museum to its victims, west of Krakow.
Kraków
Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory
The wartime enamelware factory, now a museum about Krakow under German occupation from 1939 to 1945.
Gdańsk
European Solidarity Centre
A museum beside the Gdansk shipyard charting the rise of the Solidarity movement and the fall of communism in Europe.
Lublin
Majdanek Memorial
The preserved site of a German Nazi concentration and extermination camp on the edge of Lublin, kept as a memorial to its victims.
Kraków
Czartoryski Museum
Home to Leonardo da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine", the star of Poland's oldest museum collection.
Kraków
MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art
Poland's leading contemporary-art museum, built beside the Schindler factory in Podgorze.
Katowice
Silesian Museum
A major regional museum built into the shafts and tunnels of a closed Katowice coal mine, with most of its galleries underground.
Łódź
Izrael Poznański Palace (Museum of the City of Łódź)
The largest industrialist's residence in Poland, built for the Poznański cotton dynasty and now the city museum.
Łódź
Muzeum Sztuki (ms²)
One of the world's earliest modern-art museums, whose ms² branch shows its avant-garde collection inside a converted Manufaktura mill.
Łódź
Central Museum of Textiles (White Factory)
A textile museum inside Łódź's landmark White Factory, telling the city's story through the fabric that built it.
Poland's museums lean into a heavy and important history, and several rank among the best in Europe at telling it. The strongest are in Warsaw and Krakow, and many use timed entry, so they reward a little planning. Between them they cover the wartime years, Polish Jewish life, royal collections and modern art.
The museums that stand out
In Warsaw, POLIN traces a thousand years of Polish Jewish history through an immersive core exhibition, and the Warsaw Rising Museum recounts the 1944 uprising. In Krakow, Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory covers the occupation, and the Rynek Underground runs beneath the Main Market Square through the medieval city. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial near Oswiecim is a place of remembrance rather than a museum visit, and asks for a full, unhurried day.
Art and royal collections
The National Museums in Krakow, Warsaw and Wroclaw hold the main art collections, including Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine in Krakow. For a themed shortlist, see the best museums in Krakow.
How to visit
Book ahead for POLIN, Schindler's Factory and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, which sell timed slots that fill in summer. Many state museums have one free day a week. Reaching the memorial is covered in our day trips guide.
Museums by city
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