Krakow Ghetto: What Is Free To Visit In Podgórze

The former Krakow ghetto was confined to a small slice of Podgórze, on the southern bank of the Vistula, and the street plan of that slice still carries the memory. Three of its key sites cost nothing to stand in: Ghetto Heroes Square with its Empty Chairs memorial, Podgórze Market Square, and the memorial grounds of the former Konzentrationslager Płaszów to the southeast. Around them sit two museums, the Eagle Pharmacy and the former Oskar Schindler enamel factory, both ticketed but both with a free day each week under the Museum of Krakow's per-branch scheme.

This guide separates what is genuinely free from what carries a condition. Free walking tours also serve this ground: 18 free walking tours run across GuruWalk and freetour.com, and several of them meet in or around Podgórze. The pages below name the platforms plainly, because every walk listed here is run by an independent local guide on GuruWalk or freetour.com, and this site operates no walk and takes no booking.

What Is Free To Visit In The Former Krakow Ghetto Area?

Three outdoor sites in the former ghetto area are free to visit at any time: Ghetto Heroes Square with the Empty Chairs memorial, Podgórze Market Square, and the memorial grounds of the former KL Płaszow camp. The two museum branches nearby, the Eagle Pharmacy and Schindler's Factory, are ticketed, each with one free day a week under the Museum of Krakow's per-branch scheme.

The free side of the ghetto area is entirely outdoors, and that matters for planning. There is no ticket, no gate and no opening hour for the square, the market place or the memorial grounds: they are public space, free at any time of day. The Empty Chairs memorial stands in the open on Ghetto Heroes Square, the former Podgórze Market Square is a working public square, and the former KL Płaszow memorial site is an outdoor memorial area on the grounds of the former camp. None of the three asks for anything at the boundary, because none of them has a boundary in the ticketed sense.

The paid side sits close by. The Eagle Pharmacy on Ghetto Heroes Square and the former Schindler enamel factory a few streets away are both branches of the Museum of Krakow, and both charge for entry on ordinary days. Their free days differ: Wednesday for the Eagle Pharmacy, Monday for Schindler's Factory, and the free tickets for both are collected in person on the day, with no advance booking. The Museum of Krakow's scheme also caps collection at five tickets per person per exhibition and asks visitors to keep their entry start time, with entry cancelled fifteen minutes late.

A guided option runs through the same ground. The WWII Jewish Quarter And Ghetto, English walk is a freetour.com listing run by City Walks Krakow, rated 9.6 out of 10 across 1,861 freetour.com reviews, lasting 2 hours 30 minutes in English and meeting at St Mary's Church. Like every walk on this site it is free, pay what you want, with the amount decided at the end. The walk's own page on this site, WWII Jewish Quarter And Ghetto, English, carries the full listing details.

For readers planning a wider trip through the city's difficult history, the question of Auschwitz-Birkenau comes up quickly. Entry to the grounds there is free but requires a personalised pass booked online, and free no-guide passes exist only in a late-day window that shifts by month; the details are set out in Is Auschwitz Free?.

What Is The Empty Chairs Memorial On Ghetto Heroes Square?

The Empty Chairs memorial is a public art installation of metal chairs standing on Ghetto Heroes Square in Podgórze, free to visit at any time as open public space. The square sits within the former ghetto area, and the chairs are the square's central memorial. The Eagle Pharmacy museum on the same square is separate and ticketed, free on Wednesdays.

The memorial is the free centrepiece of the ghetto area. It consists of metal chairs set across the square, larger ones at the edges and smaller ones within, and it can be walked through, around and photographed without any ticket or restriction, day or night. Ghetto Heroes Square is the former Podgórze market place that was folded into the ghetto, and the square's status as free public ground is exactly what makes it work as a memorial: nothing stands between a visitor and the chairs.

Two facts belong together here, because the square is often described loosely. The square and the Empty Chairs memorial are free; the Eagle Pharmacy, the museum branch that stands on this same square, is ticketed on ordinary days and free on Wednesdays under the Museum of Krakow's per-branch scheme, with free tickets collected in person at the branch. A visitor can spend an hour on the square for nothing and still miss the pharmacy museum entirely, or time a Wednesday visit and see both.

The square also serves as a meeting point for guided walks. The Holocaust Focus, Spanish, 2 Hours 15 walk, a GuruWalk listing by Cracovia Histórica Tours rated 4.91 out of 5 across 109 GuruWalk reviews, meets at Ghetto Heroes Square and runs in Spanish. It is listed on this site with its own page but does not carry a card; it is named here only so Spanish-speaking readers know it exists.

For depth on the museum side of this district, Schindler's Factory Museum: The Full Free-Day Guide covers the branch's scheme in detail, including the closed days the Museum of Krakow publishes for October to December 2026.

If you are weighing how to see this district with a guide, three free walks on this site serve the wartime and Old Town ground from different angles.

Is Podgorze Market Square Free?

Podgórze Market Square is free to visit at any time as open public space. It is the historic market place of the Podgórze district, and it sits within the area of the former ghetto. No ticket, gate or opening hour applies to the square itself; the museums of the district are separate, ticketed buildings with their own free days.

Podgórze Market Square costs nothing to enter, walk across or linger in, at any hour. It functions as an ordinary district square, and its status is the same as any public square in Krakow: free ground. The distinction that matters for visitors is between the square, which is free, and the district's museum buildings, which are not. The Eagle Pharmacy and Schindler's Factory are ticketed branches of the Museum of Krakow, each free on its own weekday, and neither the square nor the street inherits their status.

The square is also a practical landmark for anyone joining a walk. The Ghetto And Schindler, 1 Hour 30 walk, a GuruWalk listing run by a guide named Tomasz, rated 4.56 out of 5 across 9 GuruWalk reviews and meeting at Podgórze Market Square, is the shortest English-language option on this site's roster that starts from this square. It is a page-only listing on this site, so it is named here for completeness rather than carded.

For the full picture of how the city's districts fit together, the neighbouring district guide at Kazimierz: The Jewish Quarter Guide covers the streets on the other side of the river, where several of the ghetto-era walks begin.

Which Nearby Museums Have Free Days?

The Eagle Pharmacy is free every Wednesday and Schindler's Factory is free every Monday, both under the Museum of Krakow's per-branch scheme, with free tickets collected in person on the day and no advance booking. The National Museum in Krakow runs a separate scheme, free every Tuesday for permanent exhibitions, and MOCAK is free on Thursdays for its collection on Level -1.

The Museum of Krakow's free days are set per branch, and the two branches of this district fall on different weekdays. The Eagle Pharmacy, on Ghetto Heroes Square, is free on Wednesdays; Schindler's Factory is free on Mondays. The conditions are the same for both: the free ticket is collected in person at the branch on the day, no reservation is possible, up to five tickets per person per exhibition, and the entry start time must be kept, with entry cancelled fifteen minutes late. The Museum of Krakow publishes its opening hours and ticket prices, including the branch closed days for the coming months, on its official site.

These regimes belong to their own operators and are never merged. The National Museum in Krakow is a separate institution: free every Tuesday for its permanent exhibitions, with the free ticket collected at the branch ticket office and temporary exhibitions still paid. MOCAK, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, is free on Thursdays for the MOCAK Collection on Level -1 only, with temporary exhibitions discounted rather than free. None of these schemes transfers to any other museum, and no single weekday makes "the museums" free. Other pages covering the same trip are gathered on Free Things To Do In Krakow.

The closed days matter as much as the free days for anyone timing a Monday or Wednesday visit, because a branch closed for a public holiday has no free scheme that day. The full weekday-by-weekday picture across the city, including the branches outside this district, is laid out in What Days Are Museums Free In Krakow?.

Can You Visit The Plaszow Memorial Site For Free?

Yes. The memorial grounds of the former KL Płaszow camp are free to visit at any time as outdoor memorial space. The site stands in the Płaszów area of Podgórze, and no ticket or booking applies to the grounds. The freetour.com walk Plaszow Camp And Schindler, 2 Hours meets at Płaszów and covers this ground with a guide, free, pay what you want.

The former camp grounds are an outdoor memorial site, free and open, with no entry charge and no pass. Visitors walk the grounds on their own terms; the site's character is that of memorial land rather than a fenced attraction, and the free status covers the grounds themselves. The city tourism portal lists admission to the former camp grounds as free.

A guided option exists for visitors who want the ground explained. Plaszow Camp And Schindler, 2 Hours is a freetour.com listing run by Tomasz Łyczko, rated 9.4 out of 10 across 22 freetour.com reviews, lasting 2 hours in English and meeting at Płaszów. As with every walk on this site, it is free with a pay-what-you-want contribution at the end, and the guide's freetour.com listing carries the current meeting details.

The wider memorial landscape of the city includes outdoor sites beyond this district. Rakowicki Cemetery, the historic cemetery also listed among the city's walkable outdoor sites, is open to visitors, and the free mounds of Krakow, covered in Krakus And Kościuszko Mounds, give the city two more pieces of free open ground. Kościuszko Mound itself is ticketed except on 4 February, 24 March and 15 October; Krakus Mound and Wanda Mound are free.

Which Free Walking Tours Meet In Podgorze?

Three walks on this site's roster meet in or around Podgórze: Plaszow Camp And Schindler, 2 Hours on freetour.com meets at Płaszów; Ghetto And Schindler, 1 Hour 30 on GuruWalk meets at Podgórze Market Square; and Holocaust Focus, Spanish, 2 Hours 15 on GuruWalk meets at Ghetto Heroes Square. All are free, pay what you want.

The district's walks are few and specific, and each is listed with its platform, guide, rating and meeting point. Beyond the three that meet here, other walks serve the ghetto story from starting points in the Old Town and Kazimierz, and those are often the better fit for visitors staying on the main square side of the river. The table below lists every walk on the roster whose meeting point falls in Podgórze or whose subject is this district's ground, with the exact figures from each listing.

The walks that start elsewhere but serve the same history are worth naming, because meeting points decide most itineraries. The WWII Jewish Quarter And Ghetto, English walk on freetour.com, rated 9.6 out of 10 across 1,861 freetour.com reviews, meets at St Mary's Church and runs 2 hours 30 minutes in English. The Jewish Quarter And Ghetto, Bilingual walk on GuruWalk, run by Krakow Explorers, rated 4.87 out of 5 across 4,843 GuruWalk reviews, meets at Szeroka Street in Kazimierz and runs 2 hours 30 minutes in English and Spanish. The Jewish 3-in-1, Spielberg Sites, 3 Hours walk on GuruWalk, run by a guide named Katarzyna, rated 4.83 out of 5 across 93 GuruWalk reviews, meets at the Old Synagogue and runs 3 hours in English and Polish. Each is free, pay what you want, and each has its own page on this site.

For readers weighing what a contribution should look like at the end of a free walk, the reasoning and the etiquette are set out plainly in How Much To Pay For A Free Walking Tour In Krakow. For the wider question of whether these listings are a sound way to book, Is GuruWalk Legit For Free Tours In Krakow? covers the mechanics.

If your trip also takes in the Old Town side of the river, three more free walks on this site cover that ground, each with its own meeting point and duration.

Common Questions About Krakow Ghetto And Heroes Square