The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum sits on the site of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, outside the town of Oświęcim, about 45 km west of Kraków. More than a million people were murdered here. It is not a sightseeing stop, and the museum asks visitors to treat it as what it is: a cemetery and a place of remembrance.
It is also, practically speaking, the day trip that most visitors to Kraków make. This is how to organise it properly.
Booking: free, but compulsory
Entry to the memorial grounds is free of charge. What you pay for, if you choose it, is an educator — a licensed museum guide. Either way, every visitor now needs a booked time slot, reserved online in advance at visit.auschwitz.org, the museum’s own booking site. No tickets are issued at the gate.
Slots are released roughly three months ahead and the most popular times disappear early, particularly in summer and particularly for tours in languages other than Polish and English. Guided tours for individuals are available in Spanish, English, German, French, Italian, Hebrew, Russian and Polish. Book from the official site; the many resellers that appear first in search results charge a markup for the same slot.
How long it takes
The standard guided visit lasts about three and a half hours and covers both parts of the site: Auschwitz I, with the brick barracks and the museum exhibitions, and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the vast camp three kilometres away where most of the killing took place. A shuttle bus links them.
Allow a full day from Kraków: roughly an hour each way, three and a half hours on site, plus time before your slot. Visiting without a guide is possible in certain slots, but the exhibitions assume a great deal of knowledge and most people find the educator essential.
Opening hours change by month — earliest closing in December, latest in summer. The memorial is closed on 1 January, Easter Sunday and 25 December.
Practical points
- Large bags are not allowed inside; there are lockers, but bring as little as possible.
- Most of the visit is outdoors and Birkenau is entirely exposed. In winter it is bitterly cold and there is no shelter; dress far more warmly than you think you need to.
- Children under 14 are not recommended by the museum.
Book your transfer
- Photography is permitted in most areas without flash, but there are rooms where it is not, and the museum asks for restraint everywhere.
Oświęcim itself
The town existed for centuries before the camp and still does: 40,000 people live there. The Jewish Centre and the restored Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot synagogue tell the story of the community that lived here before the war — it was around half the town’s population — and give context that the camp alone does not. It takes an hour and it is worth it.
How to prepare
The visit is easier to absorb with some context beforehand. Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man is the account most often recommended; the museum’s own website has short, careful historical summaries that take ten minutes to read and make the exhibitions far more legible.
Eat before you go. There is a cafeteria at the entrance to Auschwitz I, but nothing at Birkenau, and the visit is long. Bring water.
What to expect on the day
Security at the entrance is airport-style and there is usually a queue, so arrive thirty minutes before your slot. Groups move with an educator and headsets; the pace is deliberate and there is little standing about.
The two sites feel entirely different. Auschwitz I is dense, built of brick, with the exhibitions inside the blocks — this is where the documents, the photographs and the personal belongings are. Birkenau is the opposite: flat, vast, mostly empty, with the ruins of the gas chambers at the far end and the railway line running into the middle. Most people find the emptiness of the second harder than the detail of the first.
Afterwards, plan nothing. A quiet evening back in Kraków is the right end to the day, and a booked car that takes you straight there beats waiting for a bus.
Getting there
Public transport works but is slow and inflexible, with a change and a walk at the far end, and the timing has to fit a booked slot. The alternative is a car for the day.
From Kraków, the transfer from the airport to Oświęcim covers 45 km in about 50 minutes. From Katowice airport it is 73 km, around 70 minutes. A private transfer means a fixed arrival time, which matters more here than on most trips: miss your slot and you do not get in.
Many visitors book the return for four hours after drop-off. If you are unsure, allow longer: leaving Birkenau in a hurry is not how anyone wants to end this visit.
