Dom Spotkań z Historią

What to expect

The History Meeting House (Dom Spotkań z Historią, DSH) is a city cultural institution of Warsaw, in a building at the bottom of Karowa street since 2006. Two things happen here. One is the exhibition programme - mostly photography, mostly the 20th century, Warsaw and Central and Eastern Europe. The other is a busy calendar of talks, film screenings and guided city walks, often more than a dozen a month.

The heavyweight, though, is the Oral History Archive. It is the largest collection of eyewitness testimony in Poland: over 6,600 biographical and thematic interviews recorded on audio and video, catalogued and available online and in the reading rooms of DSH and the KARTA Centre. Alongside the recordings sit roughly 50,000 digital copies of photographs and documents, most of them scanned from the interviewees’ family albums. The memories run from the interwar years through the occupation, Stalinism, communist Poland and the 1989 transition; the newest recordings are with activists of the Warsaw democratic opposition.

In 2026 the institution turns 20 and is marking it with an Elliott Erwitt retrospective - nearly 130 photographs by the Magnum photographer, the largest presentation of his seventy-year career ever shown in Poland. It runs until 20 September 2026.

Tips

• DSH publishes no price list. There is no admission charge listed on the site, on the exhibition pages or in the public information bulletin, and no ticket desk or online sales - entry to the exhibitions is free. If you are booking a workshop or a guided tour, confirm the terms with reception first.
• There is a visitor cap. When the building is full, reception admits people in rotation, so a weekend afternoon can mean a short wait at the door. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are much quieter.
• Thursday is the long day - open until 21:00. Other weekdays close at 20:00; weekends run 12:00 to 20:00. Closed Mondays.
• Allow 45-60 minutes for the exhibition. Add as much again if you want to sit with the archive recordings in the mezzanine reading room.
• Exhibitions are captioned in Polish and English, and selected events are run in Ukrainian.
• Dogs on a leash are welcome - the “Karowa” café keeps a water bowl. There is also a bookshop strong on Varsaviana and history titles.
• Accessibility: the Karowa entrance has a stair lift rated to 225 kg, operated by reception staff. Three levels are reachable by wheelchair: ground floor (reception, cloakroom, exhibition space, conference room, bookshop, café), lower ground floor (education rooms and the accessible toilet) and the mezzanine (reading room). Reception has an induction loop, a tactile floor plan and a tablet for Polish Sign Language interpreting. Braille plates are on the entrance door, the handrails and the room doors. One disabled parking space in front of the building.

Getting there

Address: ul. Karowa 20, 00-324 Warszawa, Śródmieście district - at the foot of Karowa street, on the edge of the Powiśle riverside quarter.

Metro: Nowy Świat-Uniwersytet station (M2, the east-west line) - about 7 minutes on foot across Krakowskie Przedmieście and down the hill.

Tram: the Uniwersytet stop on Krakowskie Przedmieście, or Most Śląsko-Dąbrowski from the river side.

Bus: any line running along Krakowskie Przedmieście or Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie; Uniwersytet is the closest stop.

Bike: racks in front of the building, and Karowa connects straight to the Vistula riverside paths.

Car: the street is narrow and inside the paid parking zone. Better to use a garage off Krakowskie Przedmieście and walk down.

Nearby: the University of Warsaw Museum and the Dom Bez Kantów Gallery on Krakowskie Przedmieście, and the Copernicus Science Centre down on the river, about 15 minutes along the boulevards.