The Kraków ghetto and Podgórze: the Eagle Pharmacy, Pomorska Street and the Podgórze Museum, at 22 PLN each, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays

💡 The Short Version: The Eagle Pharmacy, Pomorska Street and the Podgórze Museum are Museum of Kraków branches at 22 PLN each, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and in the Kraków Card. A Schindler’s Factory ticket admits you to the pharmacy and to Pomorska Street within 7 days. The pharmacy and Pomorska Street are free on Wednesdays, and the Podgórze Museum on Thursdays. The pharmacy on plac Bohaterów Getta is the only pharmacy that worked in the ghetto. Or book a tour: the Jewish Quarter and former ghetto tourad (from £14, 2.5 hours) and the Schindler’s story walkad (from £21, 2 hours) take in the places that have no ticket.

The branches, compared

Prices and hours are from the Museum of Kraków’s hours and prices page, at about 5.15 PLN to the pound. The museum groups the pharmacy, Pomorska Street and Schindler’s Factory as its Memory Trail, and its trail page tells the story of Kraków from 1939 to 1956.

• Reduced is 16 PLN, and a family ticket 44 PLN, at the first three branches.
• A Schindler’s Factory ticket admits you to the pharmacy and Pomorska Street within 7 days of the date on the ticket, during opening hours. See Schindler’s Factory tickets.
• The Kraków Card includes the pharmacy, Pomorska Street and the Podgórze Museum, but not the factory. See the Kraków Card guide.
• Closed: the first three branches are shut on Mondays and Tuesdays, on 1 and 11 November, and on 24, 25 and 31 December. The pharmacy and Pomorska Street are also closed on 26 December.

Tours worth paying for

None of the branches sells a timed ticket, so a guided walk is the one thing to book ahead. The products below are on GetYourGuide. Prices are its lowest “from” prices, per person.

The Jewish Quarter and the former ghetto

From £14 · 4.8 stars from 1,911 reviews · 2.5 hours

Krakow: Jewish Quarter and Former Ghetto Tourad is a guided walk through Kazimierz and the former ghetto, and the biggest ghetto product on GetYourGuide.

Schindler’s story on foot

From £21 · 4.7 stars from 463 reviews · 2 hours

Krakow: Schindler’s Story Guided Tour Kazimierz & Ghettoad starts outside Schindler’s Factory, goes through the ghetto and ends in Kazimierz. It does not include entry to the factory.

The factory and the ghetto

£38 to £40 · 4.6 stars from 929 reviews · 3 hours

Krakow: Schindler’s Factory & Ghetto Small Group Tourad combines the museum with the former ghetto in a small group.

The Eagle Pharmacy at plac Bohaterów Getta 18. Photo: Mister No, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

What to see

Treat these as places of remembrance. Go in this order, on a Wednesday if you can, when the pharmacy and Pomorska Street are free and the Podgórze Museum is open until 19:00.

1. The Eagle Pharmacy (plac Bohaterów Getta 18). The exhibition, “Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s Pharmacy in the Kraków Ghetto”, is about the destruction of Kraków’s Jews. Pankiewicz ran the only pharmacy in the ghetto and was the only Pole allowed to live there, and the pharmacy became a meeting place for Jewish intellectuals, scholars and artists.
2. Schindler’s Factory (ul. Lipowa 4). The exhibition covers the city under occupation from 1939 to 1945, and the ticket also admits you to the pharmacy and Pomorska Street. See the factory guide.
3. Pomorska Street (ul. Pomorska 2). The exhibition, “People of Kraków in Times of Terror 1939-1945-1956”, is about the similarities between the Nazi and communist systems. The cells, where the Gestapo held and interrogated people, carry inscriptions left on the walls. It is in the centre of the city, not in Podgórze.
4. The Podgórze Museum (ul. Limanowskiego 51). Its permanent exhibition, “In the Shadow of Krak’s Mound”, covers the history of Podgórze, the town founded in the late 18th century, and the district after it.
5. KL Płaszów. The site of the former German labour and concentration camp, which operated from October 1942 to 14 January 1945, holds an open-air exhibition. The museum puts the number of prisoners at about 30,000 and estimates that about 5,000 were murdered there.

The empty chairs on plac Bohaterów Getta. Photo: Stella T98, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

What to skip: the Podgórze Museum, if you have one day, since it is about the district rather than the ghetto. The pharmacy, Pomorska Street and the factory are the three the museum links.

Hours, rules and getting there

• Booking: none of the three smaller branches needs a timed ticket. The factory does: see Schindler’s Factory tickets.
• Getting there: the pharmacy is on plac Bohaterów Getta in Podgórze, across the river from Kazimierz.
• The 7-day rule: buy the factory ticket first, and use it at the pharmacy and Pomorska Street within 7 days.

Kazimierz is the Jewish quarter across the river, and its synagogues and the Galicia Jewish Museum are covered there. Free museum days in Kraków has the Wednesday and Thursday free entries, and museums in Kraków lists the rest of the Museum of Kraków’s branches. The Kraków Card covers the pharmacy, Pomorska Street and the Podgórze Museum. For the rest of the city’s bookings, see what to book before you go to Kraków. 3 days in Kraków and Kraków in one day fit these branches round their closed days. To sleep nearby, where to stay in Kraków compares the areas, and where to eat in Kraków lists places to eat. Kraków walking tours include tours of the ghetto and Podgórze. Kraków golf cart tours compares the electric carts that stop at Ghetto Heroes Square.