Roztocze National Park Education and Museum Centre

What to expect

Best paired with the park’s cycle route to Florianka. In about an hour, the Roztocze National Park museum shows you animals you are unlikely to meet on the trails. Near the end of the exhibition stands the Polish konik, the small horse on the park’s logo, and at Florianka the park runs a conservation breeding centre for the breed. The ride picks up where the exhibition leaves off.

Upstairs, you walk through “In the Land of Fir, Beech and Tarpan” with a group, but the narration comes through your own audio guide: ask for the English track. The park does not say whether it covers every scene the Polish one does. Two unrelated Polish travel blogs agree on three scenes worth slowing down for: the wolf hunt, wild boar wallowing in mud and the red deer rut. The hiking blog adds a capercaillie and black grouse lek.

Families with children from about five get the most out of the place. There is a family audio track and a toddler corner indoors, with play stations and gnome houses outside. With young children, linger at the very start, a Cretaceous shore with duck-billed dinosaurs and predatory theropods. Afterwards, take small legs to the Echo ponds rather than all the way to Florianka.

Downstairs, the long-running “Wolf and Lynx” show lets you look into the den where a she-wolf raised her cubs, watch camera-trap films of wolves and lynx and hear their calls. The park does not say whether the panels are in English, but none of that needs translating. Every specimen died on the road or of natural causes. Until 22 November 2026 it shares the floor with 40 photographs by Dąbrówka Tyślewicz from Sefar, on the Tassili n’Ajjer plateau in the Algerian Sahara.

One of those blogs went in expecting the usual national-park fare of stuffed animals behind glass. It came out praising the staging, with fox cubs at the den and a bear foraging in the undergrowth. If wildlife leaves you cold, skip it and put the hour into Zamość.

Tips

• English audio guide included. Staff hand out the audio guide when you show your ticket. Tracks cover English, Polish, Ukrainian, Polish Sign Language, audio description and a family version, so the narration is not the problem for a non-Polish speaker.
• Buy the ticket on site. There is no online sale for individuals, and none is needed; online booking is for organised groups only. The permanent exhibition is entered in groups at set times, so expect to wait for the next slot. From April to October the desk is in the tourist information building by the car park (ul. Plażowa 3a). From November to March it moves inside the centre.
• Mind the last entry. Last entry to the permanent exhibition is at 16:00 (4 PM) in season and 14:00 in winter, an hour before closing. The centre is shut on Mondays from April to October and at weekends from November to March.
• Ticket prices. Full ticket 20 PLN, reduced 10 PLN, under-fours free. A ground-floor-only ticket for the temporary shows costs 8 PLN, but that means skipping the dioramas, which are the reason to come.
• Parking takes cards only. The car park by the centre charges 4 PLN an hour all year, and the park warns that payment is by card only. The toilet in the tourist information building costs 2 PLN.
• Buy your trail pass at the same desk. One day pass, 8 PLN (4 PLN reduced), covers both the Bukowa Góra nature path and the cycle route to Florianka. Both start at the centre, so one visit to the counter covers the museum and the afternoon.
• Photography. The park’s visiting rules (Director’s Order 6/2026) say nothing about photographing inside the centre. Ask at the desk before you use a flash near the dioramas.
• Renovation is coming. The park has put a full renovation of the building out to tender within a 2025-2029 project. No closure date had been announced by 23 September 2026, so check the park’s website before a trip in 2027 or later.

The building is step-free at the entrance, with a lift to the first-floor exhibition, an accessible toilet on the ground floor and induction loops. Only assistance dogs are allowed: the park bans all other dogs.

Getting there

From Zamość by car. If you are staying in Zamość, you are already on the park’s recommended approach: its own directions send drivers through the town. From Zamość Old Town it is about 30 km by road, and from Lublin about 96 km. Park right outside, and have a card ready.

By train. The railway station, listed in timetables simply as Zwierzyniec, is 1.1 km from the centre as the crow flies. In past summers, seasonal POLREGIO trains between Lublin and Bełżec stopped here, and in one earlier season a seasonal weekend Zamość-Rzeszów train called at Zwierzyniec too. Check the current timetable before relying on either.

By bus. The park names no bus service, so check local timetables before relying on one.

On foot. The centre stands at ul. Plażowa 3, where the old part of Zwierzyniec meets the forest, 0.9 km as the crow flies from the middle of town. The Echo ponds are 1.1 km away, and two marked paths lead there from the centre: the blue one along the dune and the black one.

By bike. The park’s cycle route to Florianka, home of its konik horse herd, starts at the centre. The forest stretch from Rybakówka needs the trail pass sold at the tourist information desk.

Nearby

Pair it with the Guciów Farmstead , 7.9 km away as the crow flies. It is a private collection holding the dinosaur tracks found at nearby Potok, which makes it the real-evidence answer to the diorama on this museum’s Cretaceous shore.

Back in your base town, the Zamość Museum covers the Zamoyski family and their estate, which owned the forests that became this park. On the western side of the hills, the Museum of the Biłgoraj Land turns from wildlife to the people who lived in this landscape.

Background

The centre sits where the park begins rather than deep inside it, and the park’s current plans build on exactly that. Its “New Horizons of Education” project (2025-2029, over 50.5 million PLN) will refurbish this building and add a treetop walkway and a multisensory nature path along the park’s outer boundary. A lookout tower on Polak hill will go up just outside it.

The stated aim is to draw visitors away from the most sensitive parts of the park and towards its edges. That is exactly where this centre has stood since 1994.

Zwierzyniec was once the forestry and hunting centre of the Ordynacja Zamojska, the Zamoyski family’s entailed estate. The former Plenipotentiary’s Palace next door, once the villa of the estate’s managers, now houses the park’s headquarters.

The Polish travel site Nasze Szlaki credits Jan Zamoyski with fencing off a game enclosure near Bukowa Góra. It also held tarpans, wild forest horses, which were handed out to local peasants around the turn of the 19th century. The Bukowa Góra nature path, whose pass you buy at the same desk as your museum ticket, leads into that area.