Żydowskie Muzeum Galicja

What to expect

The Galicia Jewish Museum on Dajwór street in Kazimierz tells the story of Jewish life in the former region of Galicia through the language of contemporary photography. The core of the exhibition grew out of a project begun by the British photographer Chris Schwarz, the museum’s founder: large-format photographs of the places where Jewish presence in southern Poland and the former Galician lands endured for centuries - synagogues, cemeteries, small towns - as they look today. It is a different angle from that of a history museum: not a reconstruction of the past, but a record of its traces and of what has survived or vanished.

Be warned: this is not a museum of artefacts. You will not find rich collections of Judaica or historic interiors; the space is modern, arranged in a converted post-industrial building, and the narrative rests on image and caption, all fully bilingual in Polish and English. In exchange, the museum functions as a living cultural institution, with temporary exhibitions, meetings with Holocaust survivors, lectures and education programmes, plus a good bookshop and a cafe on site. The building has no stairs at all and is fully accessible to visitors with disabilities.

Visiting in practice

An hour to ninety minutes is enough to see the exhibitions at a comfortable pace. A standard ticket costs 35 PLN, reduced (senior/student) 25 PLN, a family ticket 55 PLN, and children aged 6 and under enter free; ICOM cards and the Krakow Tourist Card are among those honoured. The museum is open daily from 10:00 to 18:00, which makes it one of the few places in Kazimierz you can visit on a Monday, when most museum branches are closed. Tickets are sold at the reception desk and online through the museum’s website, and guided tours are offered in several languages. Families are well catered for, with a kids’ corner and baby changing facilities.

Getting there

The museum stands at ul. Dajwór 18, in the eastern part of Kazimierz, two minutes from Szeroka street. The nearest tram stop is Miodowa on Starowiślna street (lines 3, 9, 19, 24 and 50), from which it is about a three-minute walk. Walking from the Main Market Square takes a good fifteen minutes, and from the main railway station the easiest route is a tram down Starowiślna.

Nearby

Just around the corner on Szeroka street stands the Old Synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue in Poland, and on plac Wolnica the Ethnographic Museum covers the folk culture of the region. By the river, in a former tram depot, is the Museum of Engineering and Technology.