POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews stands at ul. Mordechaja Anielewicza 6 in the Muranów district of Warsaw, Poland, on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. It faces the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, and the contrast between the modern glass-clad building and the memorial in front of it shapes much of the visit. The museum opened its core exhibition in 2014 and documents a thousand years of Jewish life in Poland, not only the Holocaust.

The core exhibition is arranged in eight galleries that follow the story chronologically, beginning with the earliest Jewish settlers and moving through medieval communities, the golden age of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Hasidism, the 19th century, interwar Poland, the Holocaust and the postwar years. Rather than relying on glass cases, it uses reconstructions, interactive displays, recordings and period interiors. A reconstruction of the painted ceiling of the wooden Gwoździec synagogue is among its best-known pieces, and a recreated Jewish street from interwar Warsaw gives a sense of daily life.

The building itself, designed by Finnish architects, features a narrow central hall with sculpted walls that suggests a parted sea. Temporary exhibitions, a bookshop and a café are on site.

The core exhibition alone takes about three hours, and a half day is a sensible allowance if temporary shows are included. The last entry to the core exhibition is two hours before closing. Weekday mornings are calmest, and Thursday free tickets, which should be booked in advance, bring crowds. Saturday evenings stay open until 20:00. Visitors often combine POLIN with the Umschlagplatz Monument, about ten minutes on foot, and the museum is reachable by several tram lines to the Muranowska stop or on foot from the Ratusz Arsenał metro station.