POLIN Museum

For most of a millennium Poland held the largest Jewish community in the world, and POLIN was built to tell that whole span rather than its ending. The core exhibition runs through eight galleries, from the first medieval merchants to the interwar cities, and its centrepiece is a full reconstruction of the painted timber ceiling and bimah of the seventeenth-century wooden synagogue at Gwozdziec, rebuilt by hand with period tools and pigments. The building itself, finished in 2013 by Finnish architects Lahdelma and Mahlamaki, is a plain glass box split by a curving canyon of a hall.

History

The idea of the museum came from the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland in 1995, when the city allocated land in Muranów, Warsaw's prewar Jewish quarter. The Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma won the design competition on 30 June 2005, construction began on 30 June 2009, the building opened on 19 April 2013 and the core exhibition on 28 October 2014, and in 2016 it won the European Museum of the Year Award (Wikipedia, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews).

What's there

• The Gwozdziec ceiling - a wooden synagogue ceiling rebuilt by hand, painted in period pigments.
• The eight core galleries - a thousand years, from medieval merchants to the twentieth century.
• The Jewish Town gallery - a reconstructed street and market of the seventeenth century.
• The building - a glass block cut through by a curved, canyon-like hall.

When to go

Year-round; it is entirely indoors and works as a rainy-day anchor. Allow at least two hours, three if you read rather than skim. Book online in summer and at weekends, when timed slots sell out. Thursday evenings are usually the quietest hours.

Before you go

The core exhibition is very large and text-heavy, and visitors regularly run out of stamina before the last galleries - start at whichever end matters most to you. The audio guide is close to essential. Later sections deal with painful history and are not suitable for young children. The surrounding district is post-war housing and has little to look at.

Nearby

The Warsaw old town is fifteen minutes by tram; the Vistula boulevards are beyond it.

Key facts