Władysław Broniewski Museum

What to expect

Dąbrowskiego Street 51 in Mokotów, second floor of an apartment building. You open the door and walk into the flat where Władysław Broniewski lived from 1945 - when he returned to Warsaw after a wartime odyssey through Romania, Palestine, Iraq and Jerusalem - until his death on 10 February 1962. This is his actual home, not a reconstruction.

Broniewski is a poet whose verses can simultaneously levitate and bite. “Bagnet na bron” (Bayonets On, 1939) became a resistance anthem before the war even started. “Komu bije zegar” (For Whom the Clock Tolls) - a poetic testament written in this very apartment. And alongside those: intimate lyrics, Russian translations, polemics with a regime that needed him and feared him in equal measure.

The museum preserves the apartment layout from the poet’s time. His study with the desk, a library of several thousand volumes (Broniewski was a voracious reader), manuscripts, typed poems with handwritten corrections, correspondence, photographs. On the walls hang paintings - Broniewski was friends with visual artists, and some works were gifts. Period furniture, personal objects - a watch, a pipe, documents.

This is a branch of the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature. The curator guides you through and talks not just about the poetry but about Broniewski’s life - his arrest by the NKVD in Lwów in 1940, his two marriages, his daughter Joanna (also a poet), alcohol and depression, complicated relations with the communist authorities. The visit is intimate - you will most likely be the only guest.

Tips

• Visits by prior arrangement - phone 22 845 03 28 or email the Museum of Literature. Weekdays 10:00-15:00.
• Free entry.
• Second floor, no lift. Narrow staircase.
• The exhibition is aimed at adults and young people interested in literature - few visual attractions for younger children.
• Worth combining with a visit to Maria Dąbrowska Museum (1 Progi Street, same institution, 1 km south) - both are branches of the Museum of Literature.

Getting there

Bus: Lines 117, 141, 172 - Dąbrowskiego stop, directly outside the museum.

Tram: Lines 4, 10, 14 - Madalińskiego stop (ul. Puławska), 10 minutes walk east.

Metro: Wilanowska (M1) - 1.5 km south. Racławicka (M1) - 1 km north.

By car: Street parking on Dąbrowskiego - spaces available, paid zone.

In the neighbourhood

Literary Mokotów: Maria Dąbrowska Museum (1 Progi Street, 1 km south - another branch of the Museum of Literature), Królikarnia Sculpture Museum (113a Puławska Street, 1.5 km south - palace in a park, Polish sculpture from the 18th century onward). Further: Museum of Cursed Soldiers (37 Rakowiecka Street, 1 km west - former Mokotów prison).