Muzeum Drukarstwa

What to Expect

On Zabkowska Street — one of the most atmospheric pre-war streets in the Praga district — a ground-floor workshop tucked into a residential building takes you back several centuries. The Museum of Printing is a branch of the Museum of Warsaw: small, inexpensive, and entirely focused on one subject — how books, newspapers, posters, and printed matter were produced in Warsaw over four hundred years.

The permanent exhibition, “The Charm of Typefaces” (Czar czcionki), traces the arc from Gutenberg’s invention through traditional typesetting, graphic techniques, and bookbinding. The centerpiece is a reconstructed 18th-century printing press — operational, not fast. You stand beside it, work the mechanism, and walk out with a commemorative print you pressed yourself. This is the only museum in Warsaw where you leave with something you made by hand.

The second highlight is the reconstructed office of Salomon Lewental (1831-1899), one of Warsaw’s most important 19th-century publishers. A period room — desk, shelves, tools — from the world where decisions were made about what Poles would read.

The collection holds around 20,000 objects: typefaces, matrices, woodcut blocks, printing machines, posters, maps, artistic bindings. You see a fraction on display, but a well-narrated fraction.

Allow 30-60 minutes for the permanent exhibition. If you catch a workshop — typographic, linocut, or traditional business card design — add another 30-45 minutes. These are hands-on craft sessions, not demonstrations.

Note: this is a workshop-museum, not a grand gallery. A few rooms, one floor, human scale. That’s the point.

Tips

• Free on Thursdays. Standard admission is only 5 PLN (~1 EUR) anyway — one of the cheapest museum visits in Warsaw.
• Family workshops. Periodic “Family Typographic Workshops” — check the Museum of Warsaw website. Children from age 5.
• School programs. From preschool (“Book ABC”) to high school (“Linocut Secrets”). The museum also runs “Museum in a Box” — a printing workshop that comes to your school.
• English guided tours — 300 PLN per group, book in advance.
• Strollers: difficult. The entrance has steps (a ramp is available on request — call ahead), cobblestones outside, no accessible toilet.
• Pair it with the Polish Vodka Museum. 200 meters away in the Koneser complex. Two museums plus a walk along Zabkowska make an ideal Praga half-morning.
• Last entry 30 minutes before closing.

Getting There

Metro: M2 line, Dworzec Wilenski station — about 800 m southeast along ul. Targowa, then right onto Zabkowska. About 10 minutes on foot.

Tram/Bus: Zabkowska stop — directly on the street.

Cycling: Veturilo bike-share station at Centrum Praskie Koneser (Zabkowska 27/31), essentially next door.

Walking: From the Polish Vodka Museum — 200 m, 2-3 minutes. From Bazar Rozyckiego — 400 m, 5 minutes. From Praga Museum of Warsaw (Targowa 50/52) — 500 m, 6-7 minutes. From Dworzec Wilenski station — 10 minutes.

By car: Limited metered street parking. The Koneser complex nearby has an underground garage.

Nearby Museums

Background

The Museum of Printing was founded in 1980 on the initiative of Warsaw’s printing community, as a branch of what was then the Historical Museum of the Capital City of Warsaw. Its first exhibition opened in 1982 at ul. Lucka 1/3/5, inside a neoclassical townhouse from around 1830, within the former Norblin factory complex — an industrial setting fitting for a museum about industry.

In 2010, after the property changed ownership and commercial redevelopment of the Norblin complex began (today’s Fabryka Norblina mixed-use development), the museum lost its home. Offices moved to ul. Trebacka; the collection went into storage in Pruszkow. For five years, the museum existed without a permanent exhibition.

It reopened in 2015 at its current address on Zabkowska 23/25, inside a residential building (“Dom Rodzinny”) constructed in 1998-2000, designed by architect Tadeusz Szumlewicz. The building incorporates reconstructed facades of three pre-war tenement houses into its elevation, preserving the character of a street that — unlike most of the left bank — survived World War II largely intact.

Today the museum holds around 20,000 objects documenting four centuries of Warsaw’s printing heritage: typefaces and matrices, machines and tools, finished prints, maps, and artistic bindings. The reconstructed 18th-century printing press — the central exhibit — is not behind glass. It is used every day.