POLIN Museum and Jewish Warsaw: Ticket, Guided Tour or Ghetto Walk?

For the museum itself, buy the POLIN Museum ticket for €10.26 and plan two hours. To see the places where the Warsaw Ghetto stood, add a walking tour: the Jewish Warsaw & Stories from the Ghetto walk is the most-reviewed one, at €8.94 per person. The two are different visits.

The museum

POLIN is the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and its core exhibition covers a thousand years. The ticket listing describes eight galleries with artefacts, paintings and interactive installations, and gives about two hours for the core exhibition. The ticket is valid for one day, so you can leave for lunch and come back.

A few rules from the listing and the museum’s own site (polin.pl):

• The museum is closed on Tuesdays.
• Last admission to the core exhibition is two hours before closing.
• Everyone is scanned electronically before entering the core exhibition.
• Children aged 7 or younger enter free; children aged 12 or younger must be supervised by an adult at all times.
• According to the listing, the ticket is wheelchair accessible.

Opening hours differ by day and change for holidays, so check polin.pl before you go.

Museum with a guide

If you want a guide inside the museum, the private POLIN Museum tour with skip-the-line tickets costs €118.49 per person and runs 2 to 4 hours in seven languages. The 2-hour version is the museum only. The 4-hour version adds the former ghetto area, and the listing says you will not see the ghetto on the 2-hour tour. Skip-the-line here means the ticket office only, not the entrance and security checks.

Walking tours of the former ghetto

Tour	Length	Starts at	Price per person
Jewish Warsaw & Stories from the Ghetto	2 hours	Fountain at plac Grzybowski	€8.94
Jewish History Guided Walking Tour	2.5 hours	plac Grzybowski 2	€23
Jewish Warsaw Tour: History, Daily Life, Ghetto, Resistance	2 hours	All Saints Church	€10.94

All three start around plac Grzybowski and pass the Nożyk Synagogue, which the first listing calls the only synagogue in Warsaw that survived the war, and Waliców Street, where a section of the ghetto wall still stands. The first walk is led in English or German, is wheelchair accessible according to the listing, and ends at the site of the footbridge on Chłodna Street after passing the Korczak monument and Waliców Street. It is a pay-what-you-wish walk: the listing says the price covers the booking and the guide, and any tip is up to you. The route is about 3 km, and the walk can run up to half an hour longer with a large group. The second is led in English or Spanish and says you join a general group where the price covers the reservation fee and the guide’s payment; a smaller private tour can be arranged with the operator. The third is led in English or German and ends at Hala Mirowska.

The first and third listings say they are not suitable for children under 16.

Which combination

For one day, do the museum in the morning and a ghetto walk in the afternoon, and do not plan the museum for a Tuesday. These are heavy subjects: take breaks between them. Other history routes, from the Uprising to communism, are in the WWII and communism tours and the Jewish Warsaw category.