Polish Aviation Museum

Big hangar

Small hangar

The Polish Aviation Museum ( Polish: Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego w Krakowie ) is located on the former Kraków-Rakowice-Czyżyny Airport , between Rakowice and Czyżyny , in Krakow . It is one of the largest aviation museums in the world.

history

Flugpark 7 was opened by Austrians in 1912. The museum was founded in 1964 after an aircraft exhibition. Until 2010, the exhibits were exhibited in four former aircraft hangars that were only partially suitable for museum purposes. In September 2010, the museum received a new twelve-meter-high building designed by architects Peter Ruge and Justus Pysall, which holds some of the exhibits on 4,500 square meters. In the new building, the eight historic halls and the open-air exhibition, the collection contains over 200 aircraft and around 100 aircraft engines, as well as an aviation library and photo archives. Its inventory includes Swedish, British and US military aircraft, aircraft from the First World War, civil aircraft, gliders and rare exhibits such as an Etrich Taube from 1910, the remains of a Société Antoinette aircraft from 1908 or the PZL P. 11 from the late 1920s. In addition, there is a memorial in the main hall for the Poles killed in the Battle of Britain since 1940.

To this day, the Federal Republic of Germany has been demanding the return of exhibits, most of which come from the German Aviation Collection in Berlin . These were relocated to Scharnikau in Pomerania in 1943 and remained in Poland after the end of the Second World War .