Things to do in Zakopane, Southern Poland: The Best Specialty Museums

ILLUSION HOUSE ZAKOPANE offers a unique experience to see and enjoy the magic of optical illusions and 3D paintings that will play with your imagination. Come and experience that things are not always what they seem to be. Covering an area of 450square meters, over 30 attractions await that will awaken your curiosity. A truly fascinating experience for both kids and adults. As the old proverb says “Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.”

The main building of the Tatra Museum is a valuable monument of architecture in the Zakopane Style. It was built between 1913 and 1922 to a design worked out jointly by Stanislaw Witkiewicz (façade) and Franciszek Mączyński (technical design). Though modified over the years, the exhibition in the main building has survived to this day unchanged in its basic concept. As before, the goal is to give the visitor an insight into the most important aspects of the natural environment in the Tatra Mountains and the region of Podhale, the history of the area and the local people's way of living, as well as their culture.

The Kornel Makuszyński Museum is Zakopane's second biographic-literary museum after the Jan Kasprowicz Museum in the Harenda. It is based in the Opolanka house where the Makuszyńskis had stayed during their almost annual summer and winter visits to Zakopane between the two World Wars, and where they settled after World War II. Many precious objects in the couple's possession and their large library perished in Warsaw during World War II. The Makuszyński Museum houses merely a fraction of what the writer, an art collector on friendly terms with many outstanding artists, had assembled. The Museum was set up in 1966 following a donation made by Janina Gluzińska-Makuszyńska (1896-1972) the writer's widow. The museum in the Opolanka house occupies four rooms of the Makuszyńskis' former flat. The collection includes successive editions of Makuszyński's works, in addition to historical-literary studies on his oeuvre and diaries. Besides the writer's own manuscripts, his archives also embrace an ample set of letters from outstanding writers, pain-ters, musicians, theatre people, scholars and politicians, as well as numerous letters from his readers. To complement the archives, there are also press cuttings and photographs. The art collection embraces works by famous Polish artists (paintings by Julian Falat, Wladyslaw Jarocki, Fryderyk Pautsch, Kazimierz Sichulski, Wladyslaw Skoczylas, Stanislaw Wyspiański et al., and sculptures by Konstanty Laszczka, Henryk Kuna et al.). There are also designs for illustrations to Makuszyński's books, antique furniture mostly in the Biedermeier style, miniatures, antique art weavings (eastern rug, Persian prayer carpet and Japanese screen), and numerous utility antiques: lamps, clocks, Polish and French glass articles, and Chinese, English, Saxon and Meissen porcelain.

We invite you to visit EXPO Krupowki - Wax Museum and Entertainment Center with a mirror maze, laser tunnel and stellar cannons!