Order of the Smile Museum

What to expect

If you are heading down the Zakopane road from Kraków and planned to stop in Rabka-Zdrój for the Order of the Smile Museum, skip that stop: the museum has left town. Its collection has been on show in Głuchołazy, in the Opole region of south-west Poland, since 21 September 2023, now run by the local culture centre as the Głuchołazy Order of the Smile Memorial Room.

The Order of the Smile is the one decoration that children award to adults, and for over a quarter of a century Rabka, a spa town long known for treating children, kept its memorabilia. A school in Huta named after the Order’s laureates dates the Rabka years to 1996-2022.

It was never large. The display held portraits of the Order’s chancellors, a wall map of the laureates’ countries and a six-mannequin tableau of a knighting ceremony. From spring 2003 it filled a timber pavilion inside the Rabkoland family amusement park. A Rabka resident, commenting on a 2023 news story in Podhale24, called it a memorial room rather than a museum, because everything fitted into a single room.

Local press reported the move in February 2023 while the display was still in Rabkoland. Today the park lists no such exhibition among its attractions, so there is nothing left to see in Rabka.

What should you do instead? That depends on why you came. For the Order itself, Głuchołazy is the only place, and it is a separate trip rather than a detour: roughly 200 km as the crow flies from Rabka. For a museum in Rabka, walk to the Władysław Orkan Museum, about 400 m as the crow flies from the old pavilion.

Tips

• Rabkoland is not the place. The amusement park no longer lists the exhibition and the collection is in Głuchołazy. Go there for the rides, not for the Order.
• Weekdays only in Głuchołazy. The Memorial Room at ul. Bohaterów Warszawy 10 is open Monday to Friday 10:00-14:00 (10 AM to 2 PM). A weekend trip will find it shut.
• Arrive before lunch. With a 14:00 closing time and a long journey from Kraków, a same-day return means an early start or an overnight stay.
• Budget half an hour. The opening report describes a display set up in one room of a secondary-school building. Pair it with a walk through town. The culture centre lists an avenue of plaques honouring the Order’s laureates, and a travel blog points to an Order of the Smile mural on the Mały Rynek square.
• Groups call ahead. Organised groups book through the Knights of the Order of the Smile Culture Centre (Centrum Kultury im. Kawalerów Orderu Uśmiechu), ul. Bohaterów Warszawy 7, first floor, tel. +48 77 409 28 45. Neither the town nor the centre says anything about English labels.
• In Rabka, see the Orkan Museum. A larch-wood church from 1600-1606 and a collection of Zagórzanie folk carving, a short walk from Rabkoland. From October to April it is closed on Mondays.
• Do not trust the Order’s own website. Its museum page stops at the 2003 move to Rabkoland and never mentions Głuchołazy; current hours come from the Głuchołazy town tourism portal.

Getting there

The Orkan Museum in Rabka: ul. Orkana 2, about 400 m as the crow flies from Rabkoland and walkable from the spa park. Rabka-Zdrój is some 50 km as the crow flies south of Kraków, and coaches and minibuses heading for Nowy Targ and Zakopane stop in town.

Głuchołazy: a small town in Nysa County, at the foot of the Opawskie Mountains in the Sudetes. It lies about 185 km as the crow flies west of Kraków and about 200 km from Rabka, in a different direction from the Tatras. The Memorial Room is inside the private secondary school at ul. Bohaterów Warszawy 10; check your connection before you set off, because the 14:00 closing leaves little slack.

Further south: the Podhale Museum in Nowy Targ is about 15 km as the crow flies from Rabkoland and the Tatra Museum in Zakopane about 35 km, both on the same road towards the mountains.

Nearby

The closest replacement is the Orkan Museum in Rabka-Zdrój , a regional museum of the Zagórzanie highlanders in a 17th-century wooden church, minutes on foot from the old pavilion. On the way to Zakopane, the Podhale Museum in Nowy Targ fills the town hall with the crafts of a market town. At the end of the road, the Tatra Museum in Zakopane on Krupówki 10 explains how the resort’s highland myth came about, which makes it a sensible first stop in Zakopane.

Background

Głuchołazy is the collection’s fourth home in 27 years, and the first three were all in Rabka: a rehabilitation centre on ul. Dietla 2, a primary school on ul. Sądecka and the Rabkoland pavilion. Only the pavilion was built for it, yet the collection moved out after about twenty years. Once again it borrows space from another institution, this time a private secondary school.

Głuchołazy has its own claim on the Order. Ewa Chrobak, a local girl, won the national competition to design it when she was nine, and in 2018 the town received the honorary title of City of the Order of the Smile.

When the move was announced in February 2023, Rabka’s mayor offered Willa Anioł, then being rebuilt, as a new home and asked for the collection to stay. In March the mayor of Głuchołazy confirmed to the Polish Press Agency that the town had been offered the exhibits and was adapting rooms for them. The exhibition opened on 21 September 2023, during a visit by Martyna Wojciechowska, Ewa Chrobak and Chancellor Marek Michalak.