Antonina Leśniewska Museum of Pharmacy —part of the Museum of Warsaw

In this small museum on the ground floor of an Old Town tenement house, the antique furniture and exhibits will transport you to a time when pharmacies produced their own medicines and ready-made drugs were just a sideline.

The first room is a pharmacy interior, full of fancy containers, bottles and flacons. As befits a real pharmacy, there is also an old cash register, scales and a so-called ‘receptura’, a special worktop with equipment for making medicinal preparations, as well as a huge vat. Another room is full of shelves bearing various types of containers for medicines, grouped according to the drug’s effects on the human body. They come with information on the natural ingredients needed for their production, formulae, and available forms of the drug. Here you can also use a library of pharmaceutical publications.
The next exhibition is entitled ‘Colour and Cut’. The bottles and decanters gathered here come in a delightful variety of colours and shapes. They are made of different types of glass. You will also learn why glass was the basic material for making pharmaceutical packaging and how its various colours are achieved.

Finally, take a look at the exhibition ‘Kampo medicines in the Japanese tradition’. It presents the specifics of medieval Chinese medicine, which reached Japan in the 6th century. Prepare yourself for the sight of unusual medicinal raw materials such as silkworms, cockroaches, cicadas, and seahorses.

The Museum of Pharmacy is perfect for enthusiasts of medical history, as well as for families with children, or tourists looking for less obvious attractions in Warsaw.