The Kitchen From the Inside

In its old tram depot in Kazimierz, the Museum of Engineering and Technology shows how the Polish kitchen changed over the 20th century. The story runs from the coal range and the ice box to the Bartek food processor and the first Polish dishwashers. It is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00-18:00, until 31 December 2027.

The Museum of Engineering and Technology on the exhibition (the museum’s own English text):

Banana Yoshimoto wrote: The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. At the Museum of Engineering and Technology in Kraków, we share this passion. This is why we would like to invite you to an exhibition devoted to the heart of every home.

The Kitchen From the Inside is a fascinating journey through the 20th century, showing how the development of technology revolutionized the way in which we get, prepare, process, and store food. The introduction of electricity and gas had a major impact on everyday life and the culinary practices of the Poles. We want to show the scale of the changes that took place in Polish homes: from the work done by household members to the precision of electrical appliances.

What to expect

The show fills part of the Depot at ulica Świętego Wawrzyńca 15, the museum’s main site. The Polish Press Agency (PAP) counted 330 objects in about 200 square metres, nearly 200 of them from the museum’s own collection. The rest were lent by the Ethnographic Museum, the Museum of Krakow and the National Museum. The museum’s English page gives a figure of 400.

The route has six sections that follow food into the home: shopping, the kitchen as a room, storage, cooking, cleaning and waste, and a final room of small pleasures. Archive photographs, film and animation sit alongside the objects.

Objects named by the museum and the press:

• The Bartek food processor - which the museum calls legendary, shown in the cooking section with mixers, juicers and the prodiż, a Polish electric baking pan.
• The Gródek electric cooker - singled out by the museum as a valuable piece.
• The Kawex coffee and tea machine - in the last section, with coffee grinders, soda siphons and home ice-cream makers.
• The first Thermomix, from 1998 - noted by the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, which shows that the story runs past communism into the 1990s.
• A shop counter from near Poznań - the curator Beata Krzaczyńska told the news site Głos24 that the museum drove out to buy it. It fitted a story about urban retail and women’s work.

The curators are Beata Krzaczyńska and Dr Filip Wróblewski. The opening night was on 26 March 2026; the show opened to the public the next day.

Alongside the show the museum runs curator’s tours, with earlier ones on 5 July and 6 September among other dates. There are also two series for adults: “Dizajn od kuchni” on design and “Konserwacja od kuchni”, paid workshops with the museum’s conservators, such as making an object in terrazzo in September. The event pages are in Polish only.

Context

The Frankfurt kitchen, which the second section refers to, was designed in 1926 by the Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky for the social housing of New Frankfurt. It measured 1.9 by 3.4 metres and was laid out to save the cook’s steps, borrowing Frederick Taylor’s factory-efficiency methods. About 10,000 were fitted in Frankfurt flats by the end of the 1920s.

At the other end of the museum’s story is the “ślepa kuchnia”, literally a “blind kitchen”: a windowless kitchen, typical of flats in Polish post-war housing blocks. The museum presents it as the last stage of a route that starts with closed kitchens built around large coal stoves.

The building is an exhibit in its own right. The brick halls on Świętego Wawrzyńca went up in 1882 as a depot for horse-drawn trams, and they are the oldest of their kind in Krakow.

Tickets and time

• Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-18:00 (10 AM-6 PM), closed on Mondays. Last entry is at 17:00, and the ticket office closes for a break from 14:10 to 14:30. The museum’s price and hours page lists no separate autumn or winter hours.
• Separate or combined ticket: the show alone costs PLN 20 (reduced PLN 15, preschool children PLN 10, family PLN 55). Combined with the permanent exhibition, The City. Technosensitivity, it is PLN 45 (reduced PLN 35, family PLN 130), only PLN 10 more than the permanent exhibition alone. Buy at the ticket office or in the museum’s online shop .
• Free Tuesdays do not cover this show. The museum’s price list gives free Tuesday admission to the permanent exhibition only, so on a Tuesday you still pay for this one. The current rules are on the museum’s hours and prices page .
• How long: allow 45 to 60 minutes for the show itself. The museum scheduled its tour for seniors on 3 October at 45 minutes. With the permanent exhibition, allow three hours.
• Best for: families, especially grandparents with grandchildren, since the objects start conversations about how things used to be. Also for fans of Polish communist-era design, and for anyone already visiting the permanent exhibition.
• Skip if: you grew up with these appliances and want to see things you do not already know. The grandfather in Tygodnik Powszechny’s review grumbled that he has twice as much of this kit at home.
• Ticket validity: a standard Depot ticket is valid for 30 days from the date printed on it. Tuesday and special tickets are valid only on the day shown.
• English on site: the museum publishes the exhibition text in English on its website. It says nothing about English labels in the gallery, and its event pages for this show are in Polish only. Guided tours in a foreign language can be booked for groups at PLN 200 plus admission.

What the press says

PAP (25 Mar 2026, reprinted by HorecaTrends.pl): a preview with the numbers: 330 objects in about 200 square metres and loans from three other museums. In it the director, Piotr Gój, urges whole families to come - link (Polish-language source).

Głos24 (25 Mar 2026, Krystian Kwiecień): an interview with the curator on how the museum finds and buys objects, taking as its example a shop counter brought from near Poznań - link (Polish-language source).

Co w Krakowie (29 Mar 2026, ArturF): a post-opening report that finds no single storyline and no claim to a complete history of the kitchen, with the appliances holding visitors longest - link (Polish-language source).

Tygodnik Powszechny (5 May 2026, Michał Kuźmiński, issue 19/2026): a favourable review with one reservation. It is not a show about communism but something between an anthropology of everyday life and its user manual, though the labels sometimes explain the obvious - link (Polish-language source).

Four pieces: one review, favourable with a single reservation, and three previews and reports.

See also

• Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies - at Bunkier Sztuki until 13 December 2026. Contemporary design seen through the things designers live with every day, a good counterpoint to the communist-era appliances here.
• Hotel Forum - at the Podgórze Museum until 10 January 2027. Everyday life in late communist Poland seen from behind the scenes of a famous hotel, through the keepsakes of its staff.
• Born of Passion: Calculating Machines from the Walter Szrek Collection - at Collegium Maius. Another branch of everyday technology, told through machines that now look like antiques.
• Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum - a five-minute walk from the Depot, on plac Wolnica. Its ground floor has reconstructed peasant rooms: the home before electricity and gas, where the Depot’s story begins.

Opening hours and current details are on the exhibition’s page on the museum’s website .

Museum profile: Museum of Engineering and Technology .