Electronics Museum

What to expect

Read the opening hours before you plan anything else: the Electronics Museum takes walk-in visitors on Saturday and Sunday afternoons only, 15:00-20:00. If you are in Krakow midweek, this page is not your museum and the alternatives are at the bottom.

If your dates work, what you get is about forty working stations in a room where nothing is behind glass. The machines are switched on, you are meant to use them, and the ticket covers the whole day, so nobody moves you along. The point is not looking at hardware. It is playing it.

Two collections share the space. One is the games: a Pong console replica, Atari 2600 jr and 7800, Atari 65XE and 520ST, Commodore 64, 128 and plus/4, Amiga 500 and 600, ZX Spectrum. Then XT through 486 PCs and Nintendo from the NES and SNES to the Game Boy and DS. All original hardware rather than emulation, which is the detail collectors come for.

The other collection is the one a foreign visitor cannot see anywhere else: Polish-built consumer electronics from the socialist decades. Vela televisions, the first fully transistorised Polish table radio, telephones made in Krakow by Telkom-Telos, reel-to-reel tape decks and turntables. Then VCRs, 8 mm projectors and early mobile phones. Western consoles you can find at home; this shelf is the reason to come here rather than to a retro games bar.

Best for adults who grew up with this equipment and for children roughly 6 to 14 who will play anything put in front of them. Be warned about the one thing the museum does badly: there is almost no interpretation. Objects sit there unexplained and the knowledge lives with the owner, who will gladly talk about any of it if you ask. That is the one complaint recurring in the few negative reviews behind a 4.9 average from over 500 Google ratings.

Allow two to three hours as a family. If nobody in your group actually wants to play, 40 minutes will do and 40 PLN is hard to justify.

Tips

• Weekends only, and arrive early. Saturday and Sunday, 15:00-20:00, last entry 19:00; the museum warns it may already be shut after 19:00. Monday to Friday the space is booked for school workshops (08:30-16:00) and children’s birthday parties (16:00-19:00).
• The all-day ticket rewards a long visit. Standard 40 PLN, reduced 30 PLN (children aged 4 to 16), family 120 PLN for 2+2 and 150 PLN for 2+3, under-4s free. The price is the same whether you stay 30 minutes or five hours, so arriving at 15:00 is worth roughly twice what arriving at 18:30 is worth.
• Bring cash. Tickets are sold at the door only, there is no online sale, and the museum publishes nothing about card payment. Reviewers advise cash, which is the safe assumption.
• Language is barely an issue, for an odd reason. Because the displays carry almost no text, there is almost nothing to translate; the interface is a joystick. The museum publishes no information on label or tour languages, so if you want the stories behind the objects, expect to ask in Polish or bring someone who can.
• Check the season pass validity before paying. The price list offers an “8 bit” pass at 232 PLN (8 entries, three months) and a “16 bit” pass at 432 PLN (16 entries, six months). The regulations on the same page say two or four months. Passes are sold on site only.
• A midweek visit is possible but priced for groups. Out-of-hours visits are arranged by phone on +48 532 798 799: two hours, 300 PLN for up to seven people. That is 43 PLN a head for a full group of seven and 150 PLN each for a couple.
• There is no free day. This is a private museum with no free-admission day, unlike the city and national branches elsewhere in Krakow.
• Accessibility: call first. The museum publishes no accessibility information - call before visiting. Regional press reported touch-based tours for blind and partially sighted guests arranged in 2021 with the Malopolska branch of the Polish Association of the Blind.

Getting there

The museum sits in Krowodrza, just north of the Old Town ring, at the very start of ul. Wrocławska. It is close enough to walk from the centre.

Tram: lines 18 and 20 to Nowy Kleparz, then two minutes up Wrocławska. The building is a few dozen metres from the junction with ul. Prądnicka.

Bus: Nowy Kleparz is one of the city’s larger bus interchanges, and one of its stops is on Wrocławska itself, outside the door.

On foot: about 20 minutes from the Main Square straight up ul. Długa. About 15 minutes from Kraków Główny station along al. Słowackiego.

By car: Wrocławska lies inside the paid parking area and the museum lists no car park of its own; check the meter for charging hours. The street is narrow and full - the tram is easier.

Nearby

Krakow has three playable-technology museums and the choice comes down to price, subject and the day of the week. The Krakow Arcade Museum in Czyżyny runs full-size arcade cabinets for 70 PLN, thirty more than here and a tram ride further out. The Krakow Pinball Museum on Stradomska is pinball tables only, 50 PLN, but it is inside the Old Town and open every day. Pick that one if your trip falls midweek, when the Electronics Museum takes groups only.

For a different kind of visit entirely, the Museum of Engineering and Technology in Kazimierz shows historic trams, cars and machines for 35 PLN, with proper bilingual captions and a curated narrative. If the lack of explanation on Wrocławska bothered you, that is the corrective.

Background

The museum opened in May 2021 and was founded by two brothers, Łukasz and Artur Bazarnik. They had run the family electronics shop in Krakow, inherited from their parents, and over the years accumulated equipment they bought, kept back or were handed by customers until the stock outgrew the shop. That origin explains the character of the place: not an acquired museum collection but the working life of two specific people, which is why everything can still be switched on.

The collection keeps growing the same way. The museum openly asks the public to hand in old radios, turntables, tape decks, VCRs, computers and consoles rather than throw them out, and gives a phone number for it. The practical consequence for a returning visitor is that the exhibition is not the same one it was two years ago.

In spring 2024 the brothers opened a second branch in Chorzów, in Upper Silesia, at ul. Jagiellońska 3, with more than 400 devices. Krakow remains the main site.