Museum of Warsaw Praga
Why is it significant?
Find the modest old houses at Targowa 50 and 52, lower and humbler than the tall apartment buildings around them. This is the Museum of Warsaw Praga, a branch of the Museum of Warsaw that opened in 2015, and it tells the story of the right bank in the voices of the people who live here.
Key Facts
| Place | Museum of Warsaw Praga |
|---|---|
| Address | ul. Targowa 50/52, 03-733 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.25170, 21.03950 |
| Part of Walk | Warsaw's Right Bank: Praga's Bears, Bazaars, Vodka and Backyard Shrines |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the modest old houses at Targowa 50 and 52, lower and humbler than the tall apartment buildings around them. This is the Museum of Warsaw Praga, a branch of the Museum of Warsaw that opened in 2015, and it tells the story of the right bank in the voices of the people who live here.
The houses themselves are part of the exhibition. They are among the oldest surviving buildings in Praga, from the nineteenth century, when this street was still lined with low merchants' houses rather than tall apartment blocks. The narrow staircases, the courtyard and the small rooms where whole families once lived together show you how ordinary Praga people actually lived, far from the palaces of the left bank. Inside you can hear recordings of old residents speaking in the Praga dialect, a Warsaw street language full of slang, borrowed words and dark jokes.
The most moving room is at the back. In one of the outbuildings, restorers uncovered the remains of a small Jewish prayer house, with fragments of painted decoration and Hebrew inscriptions still on the walls. Before the war, Jews made up a large part of Praga's population: traders on Targowa, craftsmen, families who prayed in rooms like this one.
In 1940 the German authorities forced the Jews of Praga to leave their homes and move across the river into the ghetto. Almost none of them came back. These faded paintings are among the very few traces of that community still in place on this bank of the Vistula.
The museum also collected photographs and stories of something you will meet in a moment: the little shrines hidden in Praga's courtyards. It is the right place to learn to see them. From here, walk to the next corner and turn into Brzeska street, a few minutes to the east, where the old courtyards begin.