Bones

A natural-history show by the Tatra Museum that you will not find in Zakopane. “Bones” (Kości) is on at the Centre for the Promotion and Protection of Peat Bogs in the village of Chochołów (Chochołów 40), a small venue run by the Czarny Dunajec municipality. It runs from 25 October 2024 to 31 December 2026. The museum’s words below are our translation; it publishes no English version of this page.

Tatra Museum on the exhibition:

The exhibition mainly presents the results of the collecting work of the Nature Department of the Dr Tytus Chałubiński Tatra Museum in Zakopane over the past few years. It also shows a few historic objects dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The curator’s main aim is to point to the diversity of vertebrate skeletal systems and to show, selectively, the links between their structure and the way these organisms live.

What to expect

This is a museum collection shown in someone else’s house. The host is a municipal peat bog museum in an early 20th-century wooden building, with its own permanent multimedia display on the raised bogs of the Orava-Nowy Targ Basin. That means the Centre, not the Tatra Museum, sets the ticket price and the opening hours.

The curator is Marcin Warchałowski, head of the Tatra Museum’s Nature Department. The museum invited visitors to his curator’s tour on 14 February 2025, a Valentine’s Day edition called “Z miłości do Kości” (“For the Love of Bones”). The museum has published neither a list of specimens nor their number, so we do not name individual objects here.

The Centre itself says a visit to its permanent display takes 45-60 minutes and that its rooms are small: groups should not exceed 18 people. Allow an extra 20-30 minutes for “Bones” - that is our estimate. Expect about 90 minutes in all.

Context

Natural history has been part of the Tatra Museum from the start: its first collection included animal specimens, birds among them, prepared by the taxidermist Antoni Kocyan at the end of the 19th century. The museum showed some of them at this same Chochołów centre in 2019-2021 in “Rare, Rarer, Rarest” (Rzadkie, rzadsze, najrzadsze), so “Bones” is its second natural-history show here. Chochołów, right on the Slovak border, is known for its timber highlander cottages and a rising against Austrian rule in 1846; the peat bog museum opened on 5 October 2018.

Tickets and time

You pay at the Centre. Standard admission is 12 PLN and reduced 8 PLN (children and teenagers aged 3-18, students under 26, pensioners); the Large Family Card (Karta Dużej Rodziny) brings it to 7 PLN. Children aged three and under go free. Neither the museum nor the Centre mentions a separate ticket for “Bones”, so we assume the show is included in admission. That is our reading, not a statement from the ticket desk.

The Tatra Museum’s free Thursday does not apply here. The Centre is not a museum branch and it is closed on Thursdays. The museum’s price list does not include the Centre either, so do not count on the museum’s weekly all-branch ticket being accepted.

Centre opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 10:00-17:00 (10 AM to 5 PM). It is closed on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays, but visits on those days are possible if you phone ahead: +48 18 265 78 12 or +48 501 101 161.

Check the end date if you plan to come late in the year. The exhibition page gives 31 December 2026, while an older museum announcement from October 2024 still says 1 November 2026.

The Bafia Homestead (Zagroda Bafiów), the Tatra Museum’s branch in the same village, is closed for conservation and maintenance work according to the museum’s price list (as of September 2026). Do not plan to see both on the same day without checking first.

Best for families with school-age children and for anyone already heading to Chochołów for its wooden village or the peat bogs. Do not make the trip from Zakopane for this show alone: it is a temporary display added to a small museum about something else.

English on site: the Centre states that its own permanent peat bog display is presented in Polish, English and Slovak. Neither the Centre nor the museum says anything about English labels for “Bones”, so expect Polish captions; the skeletons themselves need no translation.

What the press says

Two previews, neither judging the display.

24tp.pl (10 February 2025, Agnieszka Nowelli): announces the Valentine’s curator’s tour “For the Love of Bones” and sums up the show as a look at how vertebrate anatomy adapts to living conditions - article, in Polish .

Zakoplan (15 April 2025): lists “Bones” in its guide to events in the Podhale region, with the closing date then given as 1 November 2025 - listing, in Polish .

See also

• Tatra Museum profile - the main building at 10 Krupówki Street, with a whole floor on Tatra nature: dioramas, geological specimens and Chałubiński’s own collections.
• Tatra National Park Nature Education Centre - the Tatras’ wildlife told by the national park itself, a good follow-up for children who took to the animals.
• Podhale Museum in Nowy Targ - the art and crafts of the Podhale region in the town hall, a good stop if you reach Chochołów via Nowy Targ.

Museum profile: Tatra Museum in Zakopane .