POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN
A modern museum built in the centre of the former Warsaw Jewish Ghetto. It uses a thousand-year timeline to tell the history of Polish Jews, and the building itself won a major European museum award.
POLIN means 'a place to rest' in Hebrew, the name medieval Jews gave to this land when they arrived in Poland. Before World War II, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe (about 3.3 million), and roughly a third of Warsaw's residents were Jewish. During the war, the Nazis established the largest Jewish ghetto in Europe here, and the vast majority of its residents perished. The museum opened in 2013, designed by Finnish architects. Its exterior is a box covered in glass panels, and a curving fissure running through the centre symbolises the parting of the Red Sea. In 2016 it received the European Museum of the Year Award.
The core exhibition has eight galleries, from the arrival of medieval Jewish merchants and the 16th-century 'Paradise for Jews,' to a wooden synagogue (a faithful replica whose painted ceiling is truly striking), continuing through the Holocaust and the post-war period. The museum faces the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument, completed in 1948, and the surrounding area includes ghetto boundary markers and the Path of Remembrance. Admission costs about 40 złoty. The permanent exhibition is free on Thursdays, and the museum is closed on Tuesdays (check the official website). Take a tram or bus to Muranów station, and you can combine your visit with the Warsaw Rising Museum on the same day.
Opening hours
Mon, Wed–Fri 10:00–18:00; Sat–Sun 10:00–20:00; closed Tuesdays (check website)
Nearby sights
- Umschlagplatz Monument
- Warsaw Uprising Monument
- New Town & Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum
- Warsaw Citadel
- Warsaw Barbican & City Walls
- Multimedia Fountain Park
- Grand Theatre – Polish National Opera
- Old Town Market Square