Museum of Warsaw

This guide to the Museum of Warsaw follows the zinc mermaid statue that has stood watch over the Old Town Market Square since 1855, cast by sculptor Konstanty Hegel and repeatedly damaged, dismantled, and relocated across the city over the following century. You'll hear how officials kept moving her between a warehouse, a rowing club, a park, and the old city walls, always sure the next spot would be permanent. The guide also walks through the museum's eleven joined tenement houses, each of its twenty-one rooms built around a single kind of object rather than a single date.