The Old Warsaw Museum was established in 1936, in a tenement house on the old town square, and was destroyed by the Nazis in 1944. Following reconstruction work in the late '40s, the museum reopened with artifacts recovered from the rubble and loaned from other museums.
The museum (open at sporadic times Tuesday through Sunday, admission 8 zloty) is an old-fashioned history museum. The exhibits in its "Seven Centuries of Warsaw" exhibition are laid out in display cases in a series of rooms, through which one must progress in strict chronological order, from early archaeological finds through to pictures of the Nazi destruction. Attempts to deviate from this path will be met with confusion and mistrust from the Soviet-trained attendants. Highlights include a couple of reconstructed medieval rooms and a superb collection of 16th-century armaments.
In the entrance hall, you will find a superb display on the reconstruction work of the '40s and '50s, with some astonishing before-and-after pictures. Also on the ground floor is the cinema that, every day (except Monday) at midday, shows the English language film "Warsaw Will Not Forget", with footage of the horrendous destruction of the city at the hands of the Nazis. The film-showing is a brilliant introduction for visitors to the history of the city. The rest of the museum is uninspired, and you won't really miss anything if you decide to skip it.