Historical Museum of the City of Kraków — Attraction in Krakow

October 2024. Thursday, not busy. This is an art museum, not a history museum, really. Not strongly recommended.

I don't know if they just renovated the museum, but I don't recognize the photos from people's reviews from 2023. I didn't see any ruins. What I saw downstairs was a hodgpodge of artworks and artifacts in random order with little explanation. There would be a paragraph about a fourteenth century king under a clock from the nineteenth century and then a photograph of a bicycle race from 1962. Wt?

They are trying really hard to have multimedia and tactile components of the exhibits, but they threw the baby out with the bathwater and got rid of any chronology or educational intention. Rooms had themes that were not explicitly written or posted - you had to infer the theme from some commonality among the items. I did not learn a single thing about Kraków. It was random objects and paintings.

The other reviews are correct, and most employees don't speak English. I walked into a hall confused by where to start the tour. And the man couldn't even help me. The employees are milling around the rooms staring at you. They don't smile or say anything. Many seem like they just put away their phone or book and act like they weren't distracted. But it would be less awkward if they said hi and kept scrolling on their phone or reading instead of watching you in the rooms without making eye contact.

The only coherent exhibition was the temporary exhibition on floor 2 about the polish painter W. W. (forgot name). He was active in the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds. He was extremely talented and painted a lot of polish peasants, traditional dress, and even scenes of the polish army from the first world war. This was the only coherent, chronological, and normal exhibition, and...

Terrible experience. I was excited in learning about this beautiful city history only to come across the most arrogant and rude people in the city! Purchased the tickets at reception and just made my way in like every other museum I went, as we approach the entrance this women come running out of nowhere screaming and saying we cannot go in with jackets and my back pack. We then were directed to a cloakroom where this man looked at us like we were animals, he had this angry face and did not said one word even when I tried to speak to him, he just pointed at the lockers, Rudeness at first level. My partner had to be stripped to a T-shirt and my stepdaughter too, I had a light coat and I wanted to leave that on. We then proceeded to the entrance to be told by another rude member of staff I had to take my light jacket off because it was the rules but I refused. Went to reception to get a refund where finally someone with a little sense spoke to the staff to let me in. The museum is not worth the money and has terrible service to the paying customers.and should appoint acknowledged employees with the minimum required amount of sympathy, respect & communication skills, nobody spoke English apart from the receptionist which is very rare in a city center museum. A huge disappointment to our trip and a complete waste of...

In general interesting museum, but... It is too dark inside. This creates problems with reading notes. Reading on interactive tables/tablets is very time consuming and only 1-2 persons can do this at a time (if they speak same language). Text is very much different in different languages (content in English and Polish are about the same, but not in Russian) Audio guide can greatly improve experience as you can explore details of the exposed things while listening. Movies shown at the end are very interesting, however you should allocate 1.5-2 hrs to see them. I would add timeline to the film, so that visitors can understand where is the beginning of the story. 3D images of buildings (where you should use QR-code to see them) are somewhat stupid and do not fit into the general "story". It would be very much interesteing to see the movie how the excavation...