Auschwitz-Birkenau: how to book it and how the day runs

Entry to the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial is free, and that one sentence sends more people the wrong way than anything else. Free does not mean without a pass: entry cards are reserved only at visit.auschwitz.org and none are issued at the gate. Turn up by bus without a booking and you leave on the same bus.

The booking is the only part that must be done at home

Slots are released daily at noon, ninety days ahead, for individuals and groups alike. In practice that means picking the date three months out rather than a week before the trip. A free pass without an educator has to be reserved no later than seven days before arrival; anyone wanting a guided tour in season should think two months ahead, because the number of educators per language is finite. The booking is tied to a name and ID is checked at the entrance.

With an educator or without one

The general tour with an educator runs about three and a half hours, covers both Auschwitz I and Birkenau, and includes headsets and the transfer between the two camps — nobody walks those three and a half kilometres. It costs 140 zloty in Polish and 150 in a foreign language; the study tour lasts around six hours at 180 and 190 respectively. Groups of more than ten must take a guide; that one is not a choice.

Without an educator you can only enter in the afternoon, and this detail wrecks more plans than anything else. The hour depends on the month: 2pm in January and November, 3pm in February, 4pm in March and October, 5pm from April to September, 1pm in December. Everything before that hour is reserved for guided visits. Arrive in July at ten in the morning without a guide and you either wait seven hours or you do not go in.

Getting there from Krakow

By train or by bus the journey takes about an hour and a half to two hours each way. The difference is where you are dropped: the railway station in Oswiecim is some two kilometres from the museum, so a local bus or a walk follows, while the coach and minibus stops sit right beside the entrance. By car, parking is around twenty zloty a day. Be at the gate thirty minutes before your slot, because the security check works like an airport.

How long the whole day takes

The Memorial opens at 7.30 all year and closes by month: 2pm in December, 3pm in January and November, 4pm in February, 5pm in March and October, 6pm in April, May and September, and 7pm in June, July and August. Last entry is an hour and a half before closing, and visitors may stay a further ninety minutes after that. With travel both ways, the security check and the tour itself, the honest figure is six to seven hours door to door from Krakow. It is closed on 1 January, 25 December and Easter Sunday.

3 daysWhat fits into the other two or three days in Krakow:Kraków in 3 days →

Whether to bring children

The museum states plainly that it recommends the visit from the age of fourteen. It is not a ban and nobody at the gate asks for a birth certificate, but it is a clear position from an institution that takes in millions of people a year and knows what it is doing. The display in Block 4 and the basement of Block 11 are not things explained to a child in passing. For families with younger children the workable answer is one parent in the morning, the other in the afternoon, and the child left in Krakow — inelegant, but fair to everyone.

What you can bring, and how you stand inside

• Bags no larger than 35 × 25 × 15 cm — anything bigger stays in the car or coach, there is no left luggage for rucksacks.
• Photography is banned in Block 4, Room 5, and in the basement of Block 11; everywhere indoors, no flash and no tripod.
• A zone of silence covers the courtyard of Block 11 — no phone calls there.
• No food or alcohol may be brought in, and no smoking, cigarettes or vapes.
• No animals, except assistance dogs with training documents.
• Drones only with permission from the museum press office, which in practice means no.
• Dress and conduct appropriate to the place; recording the educator is not allowed.

GuideHow Poland tells the same war at the other end of the country:Gdańsk →

The last thing, and it is not in any instruction sheet: this is not a sight, and it does not slot into a day with two other items. Leave the afternoon after you get back empty. Anyone also planning Wieliczka should save it for the next day — two underground hours in a salt mine after Birkenau have nothing to do with each other, and the clash of registers ruins both.