Neon Museum, Warsaw

About

Neon Museum, also the Museum of Neon (Muzeum Neonów) is a museum located in Warsaw. The institution documents and protects Polish and Eastern Bloc light advertisements created after World War II. It is the first in Poland and one of the few museums of neon signs in the world. It relocated in 2025 to the Palace of Culture from its former premises in the district of Praga-Południe at the Soho Factory. It was established in 2012. Photographer Ilona Karwińska and graphic designer David Hill managed to save more than 200 neon signs and about 500 letters from imminent destruction. The museum also maintains a huge archive of documentation, drawings, photographs and original plans related to the history of these signs. First, the guide introduces the visitors to the museum itself and the Soho factory area, and then a double-decker bus takes them through the streets of Warsaw, and the guide tells them where this or that sign, advertisement was installed. A collection of Polish neon signs and advertisements from the socialist era is popular with visitors. The oldest neon sign is probably located at the Warszawa Stadion train station. The museum acquired, among others, the neon signs of the restaurants "Shanghai" and "Ambasador", the café "Jaś i Małgosia" and the cooperative trading house "Sezam". The museum's collection includes a "Karina" sign made from the letters of the or

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.