The Connector (Łącznica)

What to expect

Łącznica means “switchboard”, and the name is literal. Ten steps below street level, in the rear wing of ul. Królewska 17, two connected rooms are filled at every available height with telephones, exchanges and switchboards - about 200 objects in all. The space is small enough to feel like a collector’s workshop rather than a gallery.

This is the newest venue of the Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre Centre, opened on 14 May 2026. Alongside desk telephones from many decades stands the kind of hardware that, as Radio Lublin put it at the opening, was in Polish homes until not long ago.

Everything on show belongs to one man, Henryk Świerszcz. He worked at the District Workshops of Post and Telecommunications (Okręgowe Warsztaty Poczty i Telekomunikacji) in Lublin. Over several decades he collected and stored the pieces in his garage: some came from colleagues, the rest from flea markets and online auctions. Opening-day reports counted around 20 switchboards, plus military field telephones, teleprinters and telephone booths.

Ask the guide about the CB-50, a 1969 switchboard roughly the size of a piano that could take up to 50 telephones. Świerszcz tracked it down in the main library of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS), where it handled its last call in the late 1980s. The oldest sets, in sheet metal, are over a century old; post-war ones moved to ebonite and plastic. According to the collector, most of it still works.

The catch for an international visitor is language. Every tour is in Polish, and there is no audio guide and no printed translation. Skip it unless you understand Polish. The Lublin Underground Route, a short walk away, sells its Polish tour with a written script in seven languages; Łącznica offers nothing of the kind.

If you do follow Polish, it is worth an hour for anyone who grew up with a rotary dial and for readers of technology history. Children of any age are admitted, but this is a guided talk in two small rooms, so younger ones will last the hour only with a lively guide. Budget 60 minutes - a stop on an Old Town day, not an afternoon in itself.

Tips

• A single weekday slot. Individual visitors are taken in at 13:00, Monday to Friday, and that is the only time on offer: no second tour, no standby list. At weekends the only way in is with an organised, pre-booked group.
• Book ahead - 12 people is the whole day. A tour takes at most 12 visitors, so buy online at bilety.teatrnn.pl rather than turning up. Over the counter, tickets are sold at the Centre’s Information Point, ul. Grodzka 21, and the Tourist Inspiration Centre, ul. Jezuicka 1/3.
• The four-site pass will not get you in. The Centre’s pass at 95 PLN (67 PLN reduced) covers the Grodzka Gate, the House of Words, the Underground Route and Fortuna’s Cellar. Łącznica is missing from that list, so expect to pay 20 PLN (10 PLN reduced) on top.
• No free-admission day. The Centre publishes no free day for Łącznica. Free tickets go only to named groups, among them holders of the Polish “Rodzina 3+” (Family 3+) card, assistants of visitors with disabilities and Honorary Citizens of Lublin.
• Plan the afternoon by season. Fortuna’s Cellar starts its tour at 12:00 and takes 10-40 minutes, which leaves time to walk the 200 m (as the crow flies) here for 13:00. Through October, the Underground Route also has a 16:00 weekday entry, so all three fit into one afternoon. From November to April its only weekday entry is 14:00, just as this tour ends - pick one of the two, or walk straight over.
• Groups book by phone or e-mail. Organised groups visit outside the 13:00 slot and book through the Information Point on +48 81 532 58 67 or at bilety@tnn.lublin.pl . No group price is published; it is agreed when you book.
• Ten steps down, then level floors. The only way in is down ten steps, but there are no thresholds inside, and the rooms are lit with warm artificial light. Blind and partially sighted visitors can move around freely, ideally with an assistant or an assistance dog. The Centre has no sign-language interpreter at any of its sites.
• Pets are allowed. The Centre’s accessibility page says plainly that domestic animals are accepted at the exhibition.

Getting there

Bus: the Brama Krakowska stops 01, 02 and 04 are served by lines 5, 6, 17, 22, 24, 25, 29, 39, 52, 156, 160 and 950, plus the night lines N1 and N2. Stops 02 and 04 are on Łącznica’s side of the street; from stop 01 you cross the road first.

On foot: from the Kraków Gate (Brama Krakowska), head towards the Archcathedral and continue for a few minutes along ul. Królewska. There is no museum frontage to look for. The door is in the rear wing, ten steps below the pavement, under a sign reading “Łącznica”.

By car: the closest car park is in front of the Archcathedral, with its entrance from ul. Królewska. It is unguarded, open around the clock and paid at all hours, every day; it has two accessible bays. A second car park on ul. Żmigród is paid Monday to Friday 08:00-17:00 and has one accessible bay.

Nearby

The House of Words and its Chamber of Printing shares the courtyard and the address - its Żmigród 1 building is about 20 m away as the crow flies. Two analogue technologies with no walking in between, and because it is open through the working day it fills the time on either side of the 13:00 tour.

The parent institution, the Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre Centre , is at ul. Grodzka 21, about 390 m away as the crow flies; its Information Point sells tickets and the four-site pass.

For a second guided tour the same day, the Lublin Underground Route starts about 160 m away as the crow flies. Through October its 16:00 weekday entry leaves a comfortable gap after Łącznica; from November to April only the 14:00 entry remains, which works only if you head straight over when this tour ends. Right across the street, at ul. Królewska 10, the Trinity Tower has a viewing terrace over the Old Town.

Background

Łącznica opened in May 2026 as the sixth site the Centre shows to visitors. Świerszcz has been absorbed by telecommunications since technical school. At the opening, director Tomasz Pietrasiewicz described the exhibition as part of an analogue world that disappeared abruptly, and said that placing it beside the printing workshop was deliberate.

The building has a past of its own. Królewska 17 is the former Pociej palace, built in the 17th century by Ludwik Pociej, voivode of Vilnius, and today the second entrance to the House of Words complex. The neighbouring house at Żmigród 1 held the “Popularna” printworks from 1932 to 1951. Its printers began working for the Polish underground in 1943; most were arrested in March 1944 and shot at Majdanek on 3 June.