Pomorska Street

What to expect

Pomorska Street is the hardest-hitting of the Museum of Krakow’s smaller branches, and one that many visitors never hear about. During the Second World War the building at 2 Pomorska Street - the Silesian House, built in the 1930s by the Association of Defence of the Western Borderlands - served as the Gestapo headquarters in Krakow. The cells of the Gestapo detention prison have been preserved in the building and are today a site of national memory; they are the emotional core of the visit, the rooms where Poles fighting for their country’s freedom were interrogated, tortured and killed.

The permanent exhibition, “People of Kraków in Times of Terror 1939-1945-1956”, is designed to prepare you before you enter the cells. It runs in three parts: the history of the Silesian House itself, the fates of individual victims of German terror during the occupation, and the years 1945-1956, when the communist security apparatus took over the machinery of repression. The deliberate point of the display is the parallel between the two totalitarian systems, Nazi and communist, told through personal stories, family keepsakes, documents, recorded witness accounts and stage-set elements including a reconstructed interrogation room. The branch also holds an electronic database of several thousand biographical records of victims of Nazi and Stalinist terror, compiled by museum staff over many years and available to visitors and to victims’ families.

Be honest with yourself about whether this visit fits your trip. It is a martyrdom memorial, not a conventional museum outing, and it is not suitable for young children. If you want to understand what occupation actually meant in this city, an hour here says more than most larger exhibitions.

Visiting in practice

The branch is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00-17:00, and closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing. A standard ticket costs 22 PLN, reduced 16 PLN, family 44 PLN. Wednesday is the free-admission day: free tickets are available at bilety.muzeumkrakowa.pl or, subject to availability, at the ticket desk on the day. The museum has announced closures on 1 and 11 November and 24, 25, 26 and 31 December. An hour is enough for the exhibition and the cells. The branch is included in the museum’s Memory Trail, a route linking the city’s occupation-era sites - worth knowing if you plan to combine it with other wartime venues in one day.

Getting there

The Silesian House stands at 2 Pomorska Street, just off plac Inwalidów in the Krowodrza district, north-west of the Old Town. On foot it is about 20 minutes from the Main Market Square, most simply along Karmelicka street. The nearest tram stop is Plac Inwalidów, served by lines running along the Aleje Trzech Wieszczów ring road and Królewska street.

Nearby

The natural pairing is the Home Army Museum , a short distance away near the main railway station, which covers the Polish resistance state that the Gestapo at Pomorska Street was built to destroy. For the wider story of occupied Krakow, continue to Schindler’s Factory in Zabłocie, the city’s main wartime narrative museum. If you need a change of register on the way back to the centre, the Matejko House on Floriańska street offers a quiet, intimate stop devoted to Poland’s great history painter.